Ok, so here is one of my shots at Maxima/wxMaxima. My goal is to define a parameter/variable then use it in a function I have defined myself.
My variable is alpha, \( \alpha \), but I defined it as
al_pha since Maxima doesn't like variables that are already defined and many of those are Greek variables. I just broke it up phonetically. I set alpha to be a constant by
al_pha: 30*%pi/180
(I think using just "pi" works too. It does, it just leaves it in symbolic form. See screen shots.)
The
colon (
:) provides the capability to define the
variable al_pha in Maxima. I also multiplied by Pi and divided by 180 in order to get al_pha from degrees (30) into radians since I am going to be dealing with trigonometric functions.
Next, I define my function as
lamb_da as
lamb_da(x):= (csc(x))^2
Note, that I used "x" even though I want the angle alpha. We will call lamb_da for al_pha later. So the
colon (
:)
plus the
equal sign (
=) attains a
function definition in Maxima. Also note that in order to square cosecant in Maxima I had to wrap in parentheses and then square. I also could have done
csc(x)*csc(x)
but who wants to do that for 2 or higher?!
Screen shots:
Notice the difference between using %pi and pi gives 4 and \( \csc ^2 \left( \dfrac{\pi}{6}\right) \), respectively.
I then add more to lamb_da once I know it is working properly.
I can check it with KAlgebra.
I found this very good pdf where I discovered how to define a function and parameter:
resources.eun.org/xplora/Maxima_Xplora.pdf
Also this can be found in the Maxima documentation here:
7.6 Assignment operators - http://maxima.sourceforge.net/docs/manual/en/maxima_7.html#SEC41
