he use of <tt>%</tt> here as a prefix
  is completely unrelated to the use of <tt>%</tt> to refer to the
  preceding result computed.
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</li>

<li> In order to assign a value to a variable, Maxima uses the colon
  (<tt>:</tt>), not the equal sign.  The equal sign is used for
  representing equations.
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</li>
</ol>

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 <h2><a name="tth_sEc3">
3</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;Arithmetic <a name="sec:arithmetic">
</a></h2>

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