Intro to wxMaxima for Scientific Computations

Symbolic computation is an essential technique for executing simple to complex mathematical analysis and modeling, not only for scientific and engineering simulations but also for financial calculations. There are plenty of computational tools are available for numerical analysis, but few packages are existing for symbolic computations such as Mathematica, Maple, MATLAB, FriCAS, Sage, Scilab, Axiom, Euler, SymPy etc. Among these Mathematica, Maple and Matlab are exceptionally powerful tools for symbolic computations, but having huge price tags. Maxima is an open source freeware program, it has user-friendly interface with ample built-in math analytical tools and graphical functions. It can be easily installed in most of the operating systems and proficient of executing both symbolic as well as numerical computations. It can be an alternate to Mathematica, MATLAB and Maple. Maxima has rich mathematical functions and hence has a steep learning curve. But this book is written in simple style, as beginner’s guide and outlines the basic functions with appropriate examples that are easy to understand for novices.