this ALSO makes me laugh.

just got the following email from scott:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
i just had a very traumatizing experience. i just lost all confidence in maple, in computer algebra systems, and maybe in computers generally.

the first thing i do upon installing maple on my computer is ask it to graph the equation of an ellipse.

try graphing x^2+11y^2+6xy=1 with maple. see what you get.

please explain!!! :(:(:(
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

being the "helpful" friend i am, i immediately pulled up maple and typed
> with(plots):
> implicitplot(x^2+11*y^2+6*x*y=1,x=-10..10,y=-10..10);

... and then called scott to laugh my head off.

since he wasn't as amused by what maple came up with, i had to explain how maple, being a computer program, randomly chooses 50 points and just connects the dots to make a graph unless you tell it to explicitly choose more dots (the more dots, the greater accuracy, but also the more time it takes to draw).

to make him feel better, i edited the above to
> implicitplot(x^2+11*y^2+6*x*y=1,x=-3..3,y=-3..3,numpoints=5000);

both results are here:



ain't technology great?