Maxima for numerical methods (v. Scilab)?

Hi all,

Just one pair of small ideas :),

Daniel Lakeland wrote:

>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.
>  
>
My experience using CAS to undergraduate students, has show me that 
simple syntax is a nice way to motivate them to learn. In that sense 
Yacas seems better, but I know that it has not all the things that 
olders (and more mature) CAS. Would be nice to have Yacas as some kind 
of front end and glue code engine for things in R, Octave, Scilab, 
Maxima, Gnuplot, and so, on. This could be tricky and difficult, but may 
be the interface Gnuplot-Yacas could give some

>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.
>
>  
>
I would sugest a Wiki aproach, because we have the possibility to see 
the history of the changes and participate more proactively in this 
project. Almost always a book is better constructed in a lonely way (by 
few main authors), that in a colative way, but derived works (like 
translations, extended sections, excercises) are better in a 
colaborative fashions. In that case I would recomend MoinMoin wiki. It 
has a easy syntax, plugins for LaTeX and gnuplot [1] and its pretty 
extensible with other plugins, programed easily in python.

[1] http://biohackers.net/wiki/GnuPlotInMoinMoin

Talking about derivated, I think that is also use a Creative Commons 
Attribution Share Alike licence or similar for this kind of work.


Cheers,

Offray

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