Maple Player Review – One of the best computer algebra systems enters the iPad
App Type: Uncategorized
Our rating: 
By: MapleSoft
Version #: 1.0.0
Date Released: 2011-10-22
Developer: MapleSoft
Price: 0.00
User Rating:
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There are very few good quality math apps in the app store. I know this first-hand, I’m a mathematician and of course I looked at what shiny apps for my toys could help me in my day-to-day work. Some scientific calculators (with some emulators among them, too,) Wolfram Alpha and some plotting apps. High quality was hard to find… But one of the great players from the computer scene is entering the iPad with Maple Player, a quickly evolving document viewer for Maple documents.
I have to confess that Maple was not my thing during my studies, since I was more used to Mathematica, I used it. But some of my pals did use Maple with ease (and quite a few were quite vocal about how Maple was better…), but I was just too lazy to switch, even if I didn’t like Mathematica that much. Then, during my PhD my first office mate was a Maple lover (and power user,) and the only reason I didnd’t switch was that my research did not need a computer at the moment.
Since Maple Player is free, giving it a try is a must. For now, you can only play with the included files, but they are very interesting. They range from simple things (like showing you how to approximate Pi by filling a circle with regular polygons,) to more abstract stuff (like two Legendre transforms sheets where you can fill your function to be transformed.) I was impressed by this, mostly because Legendre transforms have always puzzled me, and being able to quickly compute them in my iPad is… amazing.
The plans from the developers do not stop here: they want to start an online repository where you can download new sheets from Maple’s headquarters, and then an open repository where you can get stuff contributed by anyone (you included, if you have the computer version of the software).
Truly an amazing experience that I can not help but recommend to all scientifically minded. The app is free, the included sheets are fun to read and very instructive if you wonder how some mathematical concepts work and the long term view is very inspiring. Why don’t you get it?
Quick Take
Value:Very high
Would I Buy Again:It's free, of course
Learning Curve:Very low
Who Is It For:Students who want to get a better understanding of mathematical concepts
What I Like:The idea and responsiveness
What I Don't Like:Lacks a lot of features now... But they are coming
Final Statement:Great app, give it a shot!
app Explore mathematical concepts and solve advanced problems with these interactive calculators based on Maple technology.
The Maple Player is an application for the iPad® that lets you view and interact with documents created in desktop Maple. The Maple Player takes advantage of the powerful Maple computation engine, so you can enter values, move sliders, and click buttons to perform new calculations and visualize the results. You can even rotate 3-D plots with a brush of your fingertips!
This first release of the Maple Player for the iPad comes with a collection of interactive calculators and conceptual explorations that allow you to:
-Find solutions to integrals, derivatives, limits
-Visualize the methods for finding the area of a circle and the volume of a cylinder
-Understand the definition of limit
-Plot arbitrary functions
-Calculate solutions to linear systems
-And more!
These documents can be used to liven up a classroom and to provide additional insight to students outside of class.
The Maple Player for the iPad will evolve quickly. Today, it can be used with the sample documents that are bundled with the application. In the next phase, you will be able to access a much wider collection of documents dynamically from an online repository. Ultimately, you will be able to use any Maple document on the iPad, whether distributed by us, contributed by the Maple community, or authored by you.
Screenshots
Article By ruben
Ruben Berenguel is finishing his PhD in Mathematics while writing in mostlymaths.net about being a 'geek of all trades'. He also happens to be the senior editor in the What's on iPhone network: any complaints go to him!
ruben has written 174 awesome app reviews.
