Mathematics with Symbolic Computation
This repository contains material for a course that revises and
extends students' knowledge of calculus, and uses that as a vehicle
to introduce a symbolic computation system. There are three versions:
- The Python version uses Python with
Jupyter notebooks for the user interface, and
SymPy as the symbolic mathematics engine.
This is fully open source and free to use, and interfaces well with the rest
of the Python ecosystem. I would now recommend this version.
- The Maple version, which was the original
version, uses Maple,
which is a full-featured commercial system. It is expensive, but many
universities have site licenses. In some respects it is more powerful and
better optimised than SymPy, but it does not interface as well with
general programming and data science tools.
- The Maxima version uses
Maxima, which is a free and
open source system of the same type as Maple. It is not quite as polished and
powerful as Maple, but it is still a very capable system. Here you can
find Maxima versions of the solutions to the lab problems, but
other supporting material has not yet been translated to Maxima.
There are some nonstandard choices of mathematical
content and approach motivated by the availability of symbolic
computation. Most of the content is in the tutorial and lab problems and
their solutions.
The following material is common to all three versions of the course: