Maxima is a system for the manipulation of symbolic and numerical expressions, including differentiation, integration, Taylor series, Laplace transforms, ordinary differential equations, systems of linear equations, polynomials, and sets, lists, vectors, matrices, and tensors.
Maxima is a descendant of Macsyma, the legendary computer algebra system developed in the late 1960s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Maxima may be freely downloaded from http://maxima.sourceforge.net/
Maxima can be run as a stand-alone program.
(Note that the Sage software package also includes Maxima. )
Here are some examples using Maxima.
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Partial fraction expansion example
partfrac ( 1/((x+a)*(x+b)),x);
Evaluate
1/((b-a)*(x+a))-1/((b-a)*(x+b))
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Laplace transform example
laplace(exp(-a*t)*cos(b*t),t,s);
assume(b > 0);
Evaluate
(s+a)/(s^2+2*a*s+b^2+a^2)
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Inverse Laplace transform example
ilt((s+a)/(s^2+2*a*s+b^2+a^2),s,t);
Evaluate
%e^(-a*t)*cos(b*t)
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Integration of a function with variable coefficients.
integrate(a*(sin(b*x))^2, x);
Evaluate
(a*(b*x-sin(2*b*x)/2))/(2*b)
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Evaluation of a double integral.
a(r,s):=(1+r)*(1+s);
integrate(integrate(a(r,s)^2,r,-1,1),s,-1,1);
Evaluate
64/9
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In some cases, Maxima will ask whether an expression is positive, negative, or zero. Here is an example:
Note that the “positive” reply is enter on the same line as the equation after the question is asked.
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Matrix Multiplication
Q:matrix([a,b],[c,d]);
R:matrix([e,f],[g,h]);
S:Q.R;
Evaluate
matrix([b*g+a*e,b*h+a*f],[d*g+c*e,d*h+c*f])
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Define a function in terms of the derivative of another function:
f(x) := 2*x^4;
define (g(x), diff (f(x), x) – 8);
Evaluate
g(x):=8*x^3-8
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Tom Irvine
Vibrationdata 