![[Maple Math]](../images/intro-011.gif){kind=small}
Back to Maple Tutorial Table of Contents
Maple is a program sometimes described as a "$2,000" calculator because it turns your computer into a calculator. Not only does it calculate numbers, it can solve, factor, and simplify polynomials and functions. It also has wonderful plotting capabilities.
Maple is a command-line based program. That means instead of using menus and toolbars to perform calculations, you will type commands into the Maple interpreter or kernel (part of Maple that receives your input, processes it, and presents the output).
In these tutorials, Maple input is proceeded by a greater-than sign and is red. Maple output is blue and centered.
For example:
> 2+2;
> 4/8;
![[Maple Math]](../images/intro-012.gif){kind=small}
> 4*8+1;
![[Maple Math]](../images/intro-013.gif){kind=small}
> plot(x,x=-10..10);
![[Maple Plot]](../images/intro-014.gif)
Notice how each command tells Maple to do something. The first three commands ask Maple to compute a value. The returned output is the result of the computation. The last command asks Maple to plot the function f(x) = x. We will go in depth on each command later. Through this interface, you can access Maple's powerful computation engine and plot system.
A CAS (Computer Algebra System) allows you to do powerful computations with the computer. CAS is even available on some graphing calculators, but it is of lower quality. Maple isn't the only CAS available. Some others are Mathematica and MuPAD.