# Thread: Maple making mistake?

1. ## Maple making mistake?

Maple is stating that (x+2)(x+3)=x(x+3)+2, which is clearly wrong. WHy is it doing this?

2. Originally Posted by Chris11
Maple is stating that (x+2)(x+3)=x(x+3)+2, which is clearly wrong. WHy is it doing this?
Its not in the proper syntax to perform the operation you want it to do (which I suppose is foiling).

You need to use the expand() command!

expand((x+2)*(x+3));

will return the desired result $x^2+5x+6$.

OR...

Why not do this by hand?

3. It's not that that's a problem. I was just getting maple to evaluate integrals of a certain form, and I had factors in the denumerator of the integrand. It wasn't able to evaluate the integrals until I foiled it in my brain and rewrote the denumerator. In fact, when I told maple to take the integral, it rewrote the denumerator in the fashion that I described above. It's not that it's a major problem or anything, just a bit of an annoyance.

4. Originally Posted by Chris11
It's not that that's a problem. I was just getting maple to evaluate integrals of a certain form, and I had factors in the denumerator of the integrand. It wasn't able to evaluate the integrals until I foiled it in my brain and rewrote the denumerator. In fact, when I told maple to take the integral, it rewrote the denumerator in the fashion that I described above. It's not that it's a major problem or anything, just a bit of an annoyance.
Yea, that could be a bit of an annoyance. To make sure this doesn't happen again, you could try to explicitly write out * for the multiplication instead of implying it.

For example, 4xy implies multiplication and would be treated as a single variable name in Maple, whereas 4*x*y would avoid misconception on Maple's part.

So going back to your problem, (x+2)(x+3) should be written as (x+2)*(x+3) in your integral to avoid that misconception.