Maximum

Maxima is a Free software of formal Calcul, going down under license GNU LPG from the package Macsyma, the computation software symbolic system developed at the origin for the needs for the American Département of Energy.

Functionalities

This descent was initialized by William Schelter in 1982 which maintained it until its death, in 2001. For this year, a community of developers has held the up to date program regularly. In 1998, it succeeds in applying the license GNU LPG to release the code of the program and to enable him to continue its development.

Maxima makes it possible to make calculation on the Polynôme S, the matrix S, of the integration, the derivation, the calculation of series, Limite S, resolutions of systems, differential equations, etc In addition to officially distributed Macsyma, it comprises module SYM of symmetrical handling of functions and of calculations of resolvent writes by Annick Valibouze. This module does not have its equivalent in the other systems of formal calculation (Magma, Mathematica, Maple,…)

The possibilities of extension of Maxima are very rich.

Its computer programming language is inspired by LISP, its subjacent language. It is thus advisable for the teaching of the programming to scientists potential users of formal calculation. It is also possible to develop in its LISP subjacent usable under Maxima in interpreted (for the débuggage) but also, and it is what makes the interest of it, into compilable. The interfacing with Maxima is very easy.

Its graphic possibilities are limited than those of Mathematica and Maple, but its capacities in the field of calculation symbolic system are extended from the world of the free software, and do not have to redden vis-a-vis the commercial software.

For needs for publication, it can format its formulas in TeX and there exists a mode Emacs for an impeccable posting of the formulas.

Numerical calculations

Like all the formal calculation programmes, Maxima is specialized in handling of symbols. However, it can also produce results numerical in the form of entireties and of fractions of variable size, only limited by the central memory size of the host-computer, or even of realities with Floating decimal point of arbitrarily large precision ( bfloat for big floats).

For calculations intensively using the numbers with floating decimal point and the large tables, Maxima can generate the code corresponding in others Computer programming languages, such FORTRAN, code which will be carried out all the more effectively.

See too

Related article

Two larger competitors the Maximum one in the commercial world: Mathematica and Maple

External bonds

  • Official site
  • wxMaxima, a Manual GUI multiplateforme
  • Maximum Documentation

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