User Guide

If a mathematical function is passed a floating-point argument, it normally
attempts to produce a floating-point approximation to the result.
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Converting Exact Quantities to Floating-Point
Values
To convert an exact quantity to a numeric approximation of that quantity,
use the evalf command or the Approximate context menu operation (see
Approximating the Value of an Expression (page 22)).
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By default, Maple computes such approximations using 10 digit arithmetic.
You can modify this in one of two ways:
• Locally, you can pass the precision as an index to the evalf call.
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• Globally, you can set the value of the Digits environment variable.
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3.2 Symbolic and Numeric Computation • 69