A graphical and numerical approach to teaching calculus

I’m thinking about teaching calculus using Matlab. This is far from being a new idea – people have been using Matlab in their teaching for as long as Matlab has existed – but it must be admitted that as far as calculus is concerned, Matlab is probably less well equipped than a computer algebra [...]

The “Mathematics Change Plan”

With various attempts to save money, my university has started issuing “change plans” for various disciplines and employment groups. Just this last week the administration has released a Mathematics Change Plan, a Nursing and Midwifery Change Plan, a Science Change Plan, and a Technical Staff Change Plan. My concern is with the Mathematics [...]

Simpson’s rule

The elementary Newton-Cotes rule of second order, Simpson’s Rule, is known to all undergraduate calculus students – it’s one of the simplest, and best, methods of numerical integration (if the function is not too bizarre), especially in its compound form. But what is the easiest way of introducing it? In trawling through webpages [...]

A really beautiful animation

Every now and again I come across a mathematical image so powerful that it quite stops me in my tracks. So it was with this magnificent animation:

which shows a “tesseract” (a four dimensional hypercube), being rotated. I wrote to the creator of this astonishing image, Jason Hise, asking how he created it. [...]