Learning Guide Learning Guide

5 Evaluation andSimplificationIn Maple, a significant amount of time and effort is spent manipulatingexpressions. Expression manipulation is done for many reasons, fromconverting output expressions into a familiar form to check answers, toconverting expressions into a specific form needed by certain Maple routines.The issue of simplification is surprisingly difficult in symbolic mathematics.What is simple in one context may not be in another context—each individual context can have its own definition of a “simple” form.Maple provides a set of tools for working with expressions, for performingboth mathematical and structural manipulations. Mathematicalmanipulations are those that correspond to some kind of standard mathematicalprocess, for example, factoring a polynomial, or rationalizing thedenominator of a rational expression. Structural manipulation tools allowyou to access and modify parts of the Maple data structures thatrepresent expressions and other types of objects.5.1 Mathematical ManipulationsSolving equations by hand usually involves performing a sequence of algebraicmanipulations. You can also perform these steps using Maple.> eq := 4*x + 17 = 23;eq := 4 x + 17 = 23145