USING MAPLE V (GRAPHICS AND PROGRAMMING) FOR CALCULUS TEACHING
Mingxiang Chen · International Conference on Mathematics / Science Education and Technology · 2000
USING MAPLE V (GRAPHICS AND PROGRAMMING) FOR CALCULUS TEACHING Mingxiang Chen, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, U.S.A. Maple V is an elaborate Computer Algebra Systems (CAS). We use Maple as a tool in teaching Calculus. We give students brief tutorial on Maple commands and syntax. We use Maple to plot graphs of library functions and user-defined functions, of one variable and two variables, implicit functions, and parametric equations. This part of activities helps students become familiar with curves and surfaces in two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces, and with polar, cylindrical and spherical coordinate systems. We use Maple programming language to write procedures such as Trapezoidal Approximation and Simpson's Rule in numerical integrations. We combine programming and plotting to demonstrate intrinsic points such as relationship between a function's monotone and convex properties and the sign of its derivatives, graphs of a function and its inverse function, Taylor Approximations, and dynamics of a family of functions with parameters.