A rumor is spreading among a group of 200 people in an isolated region. Maple can answer all these questions for us. As you know, a function is a rule which to each input, say t, prescribes the output given by the formula for the function. Like every command in Maple, our definition ends with a semicolon. After about 70 hours practically everybody has heard the rumor.
Maple can process functions as well as expressions but the syntax is often different.
Plotting The best way to see how a given function behaves is by ploting it. Clearly, the usefulness of our plot depends on the proper choice of the range for our graph. The numbers above give us a pretty good idea that within about 70 hours practically everybody has heard the rumor. We shall be able to answer the question exactly later on in the course when we already know derivatives. We shall make extensive use of Maple's plotting facility.