Oh gosh, I say, that's a bit strong, eh? Maxima is offered entirely free -
open-source, no less, and is available for anybody to tinker with as they
will. It is by no means the last word in CAS's, but it is (I think) an
amazing resource. Interestingly, I gave a presentation on Maxima to my own
department earlier this year; I ended up by saying that it had deficiencies
certainly, but none insurmountable, and that it was certainly worth giving
it a go. And this semester some students are using it and seem to enjoy it.
-Alasdair
On 9/10/07, John Ogilvie <ogilvie at cecm.sfu.ca> wrote:
>
> I was preparing to make a presentation to a Dean of Science about
> improving the effectiveness of teaching mathematics to students of science
> and engineering, for whom mathematics is a tool not a career; I sought to
> demonstrate that for this purpose one does not have to spend big money --
> and especially in 'developing' countries 'big' money is involved -- but
> one can employ Maxima as a viable alternative to expensive software such
> as Maple, Mathematica and MuPAD. However, when that simple plot of
> the definite integral of %e^(-x^2) (without the integration constant)
> failed, and especially when that barbarism and solecism of 'loose' for
> 'lose' appeared on trying to "quit from windows", I was too ashamed of
> maxima to include it in my presentation.
> It is disgraceful, anti-intellectual and anti-academic of Robert
> Dodier to tolerate such gross deficiencies. How can somebody with such
> a mentality justify his presence in an institution of so called higher
> education and learning? The end does not jusfify the means.
> J. F. Ogilvie
>
> On Sun, 9 Sep 2007, Richard Fateman wrote:
>
> > Some people working on Maxima know English as a second language.
> > (you could do people a favor by specifying where the misspelled word is.
> > I saw it in wxmaxima when one tries to quit from windows. Anywhere
> else?)
> > I don't know why erf(x) cannot be plotted.
> >
> > RJF
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