CATO—a guided user interface for different CAS
Hans-Dieter Janetzko · Teaching Mathematics and its Applications An International Journal of the IMA · 2016
CATO is a new user interface, written in Java and developed by the author as a response to the significant difficulties faced by students who only sporadically use computer algebra systems (CAS). The usage of CAS in mathematical lectures should be an integral part of mathematical instruction. However, difficulties arise for those students who have classes that meet only once or twice a week and therefore use CAS only irregularly. Such difficulties are compounded when two different CAS must be used in instruction. The author has observed that the use of CAS in lectures is not necessarily positive for all students. Most students consider it as an additional (and unnecessary) academic burden. They focus on the difficulties entailed in the use of CAS rather than on the utility of these systems. The author has developed a guided general user interface (guided GUI) which translates commands into the languages of different CAS. His intention in so doing has been to develop intuitive operability for CAS. For example, commands with more than one parameter have their own input windows with commentated input rows for every parameter. This means that the newly developed interface CATO itself orders the parameters, and uses the correct brackets and separators. In the article below, the author also describes two examples; neither Maxima nor the Mathematical Toolbox of MATLAB is powerful enough to solve both of them.