Maxima (software)

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Maxima

Maxima screenshot
Developed by	Independent group of people
Latest release	5.15.0 / April 22, 2008 (2008-04-22); 49 days ago
Written in	Common Lisp
OS	Cross-platform
Genre	Mathematical software
License	GPL
Website	maxima.sourceforge.net/

For other meanings of Maxima, see Maxima

Maxima is a free computer algebra system based on a 1982 version of Macsyma. It is written in Common Lisp and released under the GNU General Public License and runs on all POSIX platforms such as Unix, BSD, and Linux as well as under Microsoft Windows.

1 History
2 Features
- 2.1 Numeric calculations
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History

Maxima is based on a 1982 version of Macsyma, which was developed at MIT with funding from the United States Department of Energy and other government agencies. A version of Macsyma was maintained by Bill Schelter from 1982 until his death in 2001. In 1998 Schelter obtained permission from the Department of Energy to release his version under the GPL. That version, now called Maxima, is maintained by an independent group of users and developers. Maxima does not include any of the many modifications and enhancements made to the commercial version of Macsyma during 1982–1999. Though the core functionality remains similar, code depending on these enhancements may not work on Maxima, and bugs which were fixed in Macsyma may still be present in Maxima, and vice-versa.

[edit] Features

Various graphical user interfaces are available for Maxima. wxMaxima is a cross platform GUI based on wxWidgets. The GNU TeXmacs mathematical editor program can be used to provide an interactive GUI for Maxima, as can SAGE. Other options include the Imaxima front end as well as an Emacs interaction mode.

Maxima includes a complete programming language with ALGOL-like syntax but Lisp-like semantics, so it can readily be used for teaching programming and computer algebra.

It uses Gnuplot for drawing.

Since Maxima is written in Common Lisp, it is easily accessed programmatically and extended, as the underlying Lisp can be called from Maxima.

[edit] Numeric calculations

Maxima is a full-featured CAS that specializes in symbolic operations. It also offers special numerical capabilities such as arbitrary-precision arithmetic: integers and rational numbers which can grow to sizes limited only by machine memory, and floating point numbers whose precision can be set arbitrarily large ("bfloats").

For calculations which use floating point and arrays heavily, Maxima offers the possibility of generating code in other programming languages (notably Fortran) which may execute it more efficiently.

Maxima is a general-purpose system, and special-case calculations such as factorization of large numbers, manipulation of extremely large polynomials, etc. are often better done in specialized systems.