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### 1 Introduction

#### 1.1 General aims

The overall aim of QPA is to provide computational tools in basic research in mathematics (algebra). It seeks to furnish users within and outside the area of representation theory of finite dimensional algebras with a computational software package that will help in exploring a problem and testing conjectures. As with all software development, new ideas and question will arise. The ability to study and compute examples will help in proving or disproving well-established questions/conjectures. Furthermore, it will enable us to consider new examples which were not accessible by hand or other means before. In this way, we hope that QPA will aid in the development, not only of the area of representation theory of finite dimensional algebras, but also of a broad variety of other areas of mathematics, where such structures occur. In addition we aspire to create a research environment for international cooperation on computational representation theory of finite dimensional algebras.

#### 1.2 Installation and system requirements

Since the release of GAP version 4.7.8, the package QPA is distributed with GAP, so if you download this version or any later version of GAP, the package QPA will be installed at the same time as GAP is installed. Follow the instructions for installing GAP on the web page http://www.gap-system.org/Download/index.html After having successfully started GAP, give the command

gap> LoadPackage("qpa");


which loads QPA and you can start using QPA.

One can also clone the QPA git repository from