Subject: Using software (like Maxima?) as a math tutor
From: Michel Talon
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 16:06:45 +0000 (UTC)
Richard Fateman wrote:
> For those who think that educational usage of Maxima (etc) is a natural
> "low hanging fruit" killer app... Maybe it is, but it hasn't worked out
> that way so far.
>
>From what i see here in Paris, students are introduced to formal computation
at second or third year in university, and few students come to appreciate the
usefulness of the tool. In fact as long as the problems are simple enough that
you can solve them much faster by hand that on the machine (including the
time necessary to devise and debug the formal program) there is little
incentive to make the necessary efforts. It is at the phd level, when people
are confronted with voluminous computations where CAS software shines that
they invest sufficiently in the tool so that using it is natural. By the way
the young generation seems hooked to Mathematica (first) and Maple (second).
But i know very experienced colleagues who use Reduce or Maxima. Depending on
the domain they need to use specialised CAS which are more powerful on
specific subjects (Feynman diagrams, Arithmetics). Strangely what i hear from
people in engeneering fields is that they are big users of Matlab (or free
clones, Octave, Scilab), and have little use of Mathematica or Maple.
--
Michel Talon