We believe that to understand and be comfortable with mathematical concepts and methods, it is necessary to do mathematics and, traditionally, doing meant with a pencil and paper. Now, quite a modest home computer can provide a platform for a powerful computer algebra package like Maple, which can perform all of the operations encountered in high school mathematics and beyond, and provide graphical representations of functions, including animations.
The capability of rendering very accurate graphics for mathematical functions greatly enhances the learning experience, and helps intuition work in new situations, before beginning to do the algebra and calculus needed to solve a problem. For example, if you can see that a function has a clear minimum from its graph, then you are more likely to be able to identify its location precisely by analysis.
http://www.ma.umist.ac.uk/kd/ednet/maths/maple/
Precalculus Workbooks: Calculus Workbooks: Problem Answers Problem Answers Working Material Working Material
Note that many of these files are available in three formats: normal and two compressed (Z and gz). In general compressed files are smaller (gz is the smallest) and will download faster; however, you must be able to uncompress the file once you have your own copy. Select the file of your choice using your browser's method of downloading files to your local disk. For example, in Netscape button 3 can be used to select a file for downloading.
The exercises and notebooks take you from basic algebra, functions and sequences, to calculus and its applications. The notebooks are live documents and allow addition of your own examples and explorations---just like a traditional exercise book---so you can expand the study of any particular themes that interest you, adding more topics, graphs and animations. Each of our worksheets contains open-ended experiments with some hints for project work. In fact, all mathematics on a computer is experimental mathematics and we hope that you get in the habit of trying to check results by analytic methods!
In a number of the worksheets we have included animations of families of functions to illustrate the role of parameters, you will easily find ways to develop these animations for your own interests.
The software Maple is provided in many schools, colleges and universities, and student editions are available at low cost. Moreover, Maple is one of the standard mathematical packages used by working scientists, engineers and teachers.
Parallel materials have been written also using Mathematica.
The interactive notebooks can be found at the location
http:///www.ma.umist.ac.uk/kd/ednet/maths/mathematica/
in the directories
PreCalc
and
Calculus.
The following table provides direct hypertext links to the different sections:
Precalculus Workbooks: Calculus Workbooks: Problem Answers Problem Answers Working Material Working Material
Note that many of these files are available in three formats: normal and two compressed (Z and gz). In general compressed files are smaller (gz is the smallest) and will download faster; however, you must be able to uncompress the file once you have your own copy. Select the file of your choice using your browser's method of downloading files to your local disk. For example, in Netscape button 3 can be used to select a file for downloading.