The best app for math, ever.
In the past 30 years, I've been stunned speechless by computers on several occasions. I remember the first Macintosh, the first computer speech, the first time I was able to chat, via computer, with someone thousands of miles away -- and the first time I saw Graphing Calculator. By now, most of these feelings have dulled, but I'm still in love with Graphing Calculator.
Steve Jobs often talks about software that's so powerful, and yet so effortless, that it's magical. When you use Graphing Calculator, you get an almost-physical feeling of HOW MATH WORKS.
If you have, say y = (some big long equation including x), and you want to solve for x, pick up x and y and drag them around. WHILE YOU ARE DRAGGING, GC will update the equation, keeping it accurate. It's easier than untangling the wires on your earbuds!
Type something like y = sin t x -- GC will draw the graph, and add a slider for t. Yank on the slider, and see the results. Click a play button, and it will slide back and forth. Aha, t is affecting "frequency"! Now you understand.
You can, of course, grab a chart and drag it for a different perspective. Zoom in and out. Rotate 3D charts. (Even draw 4- and 5-dimensional charts.) GC keeps animating the entire time. More importantly, you can click on equations and find the interesting values.
Math is often hard. Graphing Calculator, because it's so powerful and effortless, makes it easy to "just mess around" with equations, and in doing so, you really understand them.
GC includes some amazing eye-candy -- a bunch of equations that plot a little PAC MAN head, chomping away. That's nice, but the thing is, you can tweak the equations, control the values, and therefore understand how the whole thing works, and pretty soon you'll be making your own silly eye-candy. No more math phobia.
There are other programs for solving hard math problems. They are not only slower to solve equations, they take much more time to learn to use. It reminds me that once, long ago, programmers had to punch their programs onto special cards (better not make any mistakes!), and then take the piles of these cards to a special room. The next day, they'd get a printout, usually showing an error or two. Even simple programming required huge amounts of patience, and very few people even wanted to learn. Then Apple and others used the immense power of faster chips to make computers "effortless" -- and now even people who would rather not learn about FLASH RAM or WI FI can take a picture of a product, and within seconds, find out whether the price in the store really is a bargain.
Graphing Calculator is like that, for Math. Nothing short of a revolution. It is a pity that Apple stopped including it with the operating system. But as a result, it's available for Windows, too.
It's not cheap. But there's a free "Viewer" version -- try it and I bet you will be saving your pennies.
http://www.pacifict.com/
Steve Jobs often talks about software that's so powerful, and yet so effortless, that it's magical. When you use Graphing Calculator, you get an almost-physical feeling of HOW MATH WORKS.
If you have, say y = (some big long equation including x), and you want to solve for x, pick up x and y and drag them around. WHILE YOU ARE DRAGGING, GC will update the equation, keeping it accurate. It's easier than untangling the wires on your earbuds!
Type something like y = sin t x -- GC will draw the graph, and add a slider for t. Yank on the slider, and see the results. Click a play button, and it will slide back and forth. Aha, t is affecting "frequency"! Now you understand.
You can, of course, grab a chart and drag it for a different perspective. Zoom in and out. Rotate 3D charts. (Even draw 4- and 5-dimensional charts.) GC keeps animating the entire time. More importantly, you can click on equations and find the interesting values.
Math is often hard. Graphing Calculator, because it's so powerful and effortless, makes it easy to "just mess around" with equations, and in doing so, you really understand them.
GC includes some amazing eye-candy -- a bunch of equations that plot a little PAC MAN head, chomping away. That's nice, but the thing is, you can tweak the equations, control the values, and therefore understand how the whole thing works, and pretty soon you'll be making your own silly eye-candy. No more math phobia.
There are other programs for solving hard math problems. They are not only slower to solve equations, they take much more time to learn to use. It reminds me that once, long ago, programmers had to punch their programs onto special cards (better not make any mistakes!), and then take the piles of these cards to a special room. The next day, they'd get a printout, usually showing an error or two. Even simple programming required huge amounts of patience, and very few people even wanted to learn. Then Apple and others used the immense power of faster chips to make computers "effortless" -- and now even people who would rather not learn about FLASH RAM or WI FI can take a picture of a product, and within seconds, find out whether the price in the store really is a bargain.
Graphing Calculator is like that, for Math. Nothing short of a revolution. It is a pity that Apple stopped including it with the operating system. But as a result, it's available for Windows, too.
It's not cheap. But there's a free "Viewer" version -- try it and I bet you will be saving your pennies.
http://www.pacifict.com/