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The following message rambles, sorry. My general question is "How do you use spreadsheets and other mathematical software to improve students'

learning of math and science?"

 

On p580 of the TWTM 3rd ed. the authors write "Knowledge of [...] a

spreadsheet program such as Quicken will boost the student's

employability." Quicken is an accounting and investment tracking

program -- I would not call it a spreadsheet program. I think students

ought to learn how to use a spreadsheet program such as Excel, both

because it is widely used in business but also because it is an easy way

to demonstrate mathematical concepts, for example graphing mathematical

functions or showing how variables are used. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) can be used withing Excel to learn programming. Students can construct spreadsheet models to solve many physics and chemistry problems.

 

There is a book "Excel for the Math Classroom" by Bill Hazlett and Bill Jelen

(2007), but I don't find the table of contents interesting. The spreadsheets for the book can be downloaded from http://www.mrexcel.com/mathfiles/html/mathfiles.zip .

 

There is a journal "Spreadsheets in Education" with a review article

"Spreadsheets in Education – The First 25 Years"

http://epublications.bond.edu.au/ejsie/vol1/iss1/2/

 

The book "Mathematics with Excel" by David Sjostrand (1994)

looks interesting based on the review at

http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/cheer/ch9_2/ch9_2p32.htm'>http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/cheer/ch9_2/ch9_2p32.htm'>http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/cheer/ch9_2/ch9_2p32.htm'>http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/cheer/ch9_2/ch9_2p32.htm

and the description at http://www.chartwellyorke.com/excelbks.html ,

but it is out of print.

 

Mathematica is arguably the premier symbolic mathematics program, with

the student version costing $140 and the full version for home use costing

$295. A recent book illustrating its use for students is

"The Student's Introduction to MATHEMATICA ®: A Handbook for

Precalculus, Calculus, and Linear Algebra", 2nd ed. (2009) by Bruce F.

Torrence and Eve A. Torrence

 

Mathematics on the PC: Introduction to DERIVE, by Bernhard Kutzler,

looks interesting based on the review at

http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/cheer/ch9_2/ch9_2p32.htm . It is based on the Derive software which, unfortunately, has been discontinued,

although a trial version can be downloaded from Texas Instruments

http://education.ti.com/educationportal/downloadcenter/SoftwareDetail.do?website=US&appId=6217

.

 

Students of statistics and linear algebra should experiment with software such as R http://www.r-project.org/ and Octave http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ .

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