I have just written about the freeware CAS Maxima; this time it’s about Axiom. Axiom differs from most CAS’s in being strongly typed, in that each expression belongs to a particular type, such as the integers, or polynomials, or finite fields. One of the difficulties for a beginner with Axiom is using types [...]
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I’m often surprised by maths teachers complaining, in blogs or online postings, of the lack of a good freeware general purpose computer algebra system. In fact there are several. The topic of this posting is Maxima.
Maxima can do most things, and there is a small army of developers and users constantly extending and [...]
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I am considering using infinitesimals in my undergraduate teaching; my experience has been that limits serve only to confuse my students. Now, for students who will not become professional mathematicians, but more users of mathematics, such as engineers, I believe that the infinitesimal approach has a lot to offer.
There are several approaches. The [...]
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