Maxima for numerical methods (v. Scilab)?

On Sun, Apr 30, 2006 at 08:33:17AM +1000, Alasdair McAndrew wrote:

> I'd be happy if I
> could produce something similar-ish to that, but based on free software.
> Anyone interested in being a co-author?

You tempt me sorely. I have been through both a degree in Mathematics
with an emphasis on numerical and computational topics, as well as a
degree in Civil Engineering, where I was appalled at the lack of
integration of computer methods. In general the students in the CE
program found computers to be essentially a big hammer that they could
pound nails with (primarily via Excel). 

I think a CAS like maxima would be a very valuable tool to let
students explore the analytical side of numerical methods without
having to spend terrible amounts of time keeping track of
equations. Combining it with R for statistics, and Octave or SciLab
for numerical linear algebra, root finding, and soforth would give a
very valuable foundation from which students could explore topics in
their major field using computational tools.

I would love to work on a project that integrated these ideas, and at
the same time became a sort of tutorial on Maxima. As always, time is
limited, but I could devote two or three hours a week. I would like to
see such a thing be online, with hypertext links to help students see
the relationships between various topics. 

I would be happy to hear suggestions of how such a book project could
be organized, and how best to present it to the student. At first a
wiki seems attractive but I suspect that it would be better to
construct an html website and have the text be stand alone without
requiring a wiki engine behind it.

-- 
Daniel Lakeland
dlakelan at street-artists.org
http://www.street-artists.org/~dlakelan