suggested Maxima 'book': if you only had one...



On 8/09/2012 11:53 AM, Evan Cooch wrote:
> After 15+ years working with Maple, occasional jaunts with Mathematica 
> and GAUSS, I'm slowly porting over a lot of CAS-based stuff to Maxima. 
> Mostly in a 'teaching' context (where 'free' is a definite plus for 
> budget-strapped students).
>
> I find that I spend a lot of time inefficiently writing out my best 
> guess at how to do something in Maxima - guess strongly conditioned by 
> 'how I would do it in Maple'), not having it work, searching the web 
> for 'examples', and then trying again. I've decided to forgo my usual 
> approach to learning software (trial and error), and am hoping to 
> 'learn by reading' as much as possible. As such, I'm looking for 
> suggestions for 'where to start reading'.  Of course, I've already 
> stumbled across the 'Maxima book' on SourceForge, but am wondering if 
> there is something else (nay, better?) out there that I should also 
> consider? Not only for my purposes, but to recommend to students who 
> might want to delve deeper into using Maxima for purposes beyond my 
> class.
>
> Thanks very much in advance...
>

There are a number of resources at 
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/documentation.html.  Maxima by Example, by 
Ted Woollett is worth a look.