In some respects Maple is like a graphing calculator on steroids. It is a powerful program that, in addition to doing two and three dimensional graphing, can carry out algebraic manipulations, compute derivatives and integrals (in several variables), solve equations and systems of equations (including differential equations), perform matrix operations (including finding eigenvalues and eigenvectors), and much, much more, including some very advanced mathematics. Even such impressive newer graphing calculators as the TI-89, which can do many of these things, do not approach Maple in range or depth.
Maple is installed in many of the computer labs on campus, including the MLRC. I will assume that you are using it on a PC running MS-Windows. Versions on other platforms or at other locations may have different release numbers and may behave somewhat differently. In particular, in later releases the `previous answer' command has been changed from a ditto mark " to a percent sign %.
Maple is a commercial product developed and marketed by Waterloo Maple Inc., and is used at OSU under a license from that company. If you are interested in purchasing Maple for your own computer you should be aware that they offer a student version which costs much less than the regular professional version. See the Waterloo Maple website for more details.
To start Maple click on the icon that looks like a maple leaf. Alternatively, in MS-Windows, you can bring up the Start menu, go to Programs, then to Maple.
If you go to Maple through the Start menu, then you can access the New User's Tour, which will get you started on the basics. Also, once you have Maple started you can pull down the Help menu and click on Contents, which will give you an extensive introduction.
If while you are running Maple you need help on a particular command, for example the command plot3d, then at the Maple prompt > you type a ? followed by the name of the command, then press the Enter key; so for example you would type ?plot3d followed by hitting Enter. You could also get help by using the search features available on the Help menu. As with many online help programs you are sometimes given much more help then you really need or want; one thing to remember is that most of the help pages have examples at the end, which may be all you need at the moment.
Here is a brief list of some websites outside of OSU that have Maple information suitable for beginners. Please note that some of these may refer to older versions of Maple and that some of them may refer to different platforms and computer systems which are used at those locations, so that some of the information they give may not be relevant here, and some of the displays may look different.