This course is a laboratory in the use of the Maple computer mathematics program to do
mathematics. With the advent of fast and cheap computers, programs like Maple will replace hand calculators and mathematical handbooks (like integral tables) for most mathematics students.
Mathematics departments have already seen this happening in a rather random and unplanned way, so this course was invented to provide students with an introduction to the use of this powerful program. Once you learn it you will be hooked and you will wonder how you ever got along without it. This will especially be so if you don't just have Maple available on the department computers, but have it also on your own desktop computer, or even better, on your laptop. The time is rapidly approaching when laptops for mathematics students will be as common as slide rules were in olden times. If there is any way to pull it off, you ought to get a laptop.