Maple : An Introduction and Reference

Rating:
Summary: written with intelligence, designed with style
Review: Michael Koffler's "Maple : An Introduction and Reference" is a stylish and well-written book.

Pros:

(1) Aimed at a moderately sophisticated user. This books assumes you understand the math and concentrates on explaining Maple.

(2) Well-organized. It has a four-chapter introduction, basically a survey of Maple's capabilities, followed by fifteen in-depth chapters on major headings, like ODEs, matrix-vector math, differentiation, integration, function and variable syntax, etc. Then there are twelve chapters on advanced topics such as transform methods, programming, and optimization. Each chapter is written in an introductory style and closes with a syntax summary table for reference.

(3) Includes a comparison to Mathematica.

(stylistic points)

(4) The author is clearly enthusiastic about Maple while still conscious of its limitations. His writing has a nice balance of seriousness with an occasional personal flair.

(5) The chapter numbers are dr! awn with Maple graphics, each with an original design, with the style sometimes reflecting the content matter of the chapter.

(6) Nicely typeset (with LaTeX). The text is dense but very readable, and the input, output, and commentary are clearly distinguished by the fonts and the page layout. A really good job.

Cons:

(1) Based on Maple V Release 4. The current version is Release 5.

(2) A very few odd English constructions, maybe ten or twenty, but nothing that's not perfectly clear. I'd guess English ain't his first language.

(3) The coverage of platform-specific information is weighted towards MS-Windows. Sometimes he says "It is not know whether this bug exists on other platforms." If I were publishing a book I'd find out!

An excellent book, overall.

John Gibson, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Cornell University