The Chisel CD  will provide the principal resources for the course. It contains a large collection of Maple worksheets and LaTeX source  documents to search and select from.

What are Maple and LaTeX?

MapleV4   An interactive  problem solving language  in a worksheet environment.   It is one of the state-of-the-art, integrated mathematics and graphics packages which implement virtually all of the mathematical content one can encounter in school or industry. Two alternative programs are  Mathematica  and  Macsyma.  We use Maple because  the University of Kentucky has a site license.  Maple, which  was originally  developed at the University of Waterloo specifically for the  teaching and investigation of mathematics,   is used world-wide in academic and industrial scientific and engineering in research, to write examinations and books, for classroom displays, and in student instructional laboratories.   It is to scientists and engineers what Microsoft Office is to business applications.  From the beginning of an idea to the final stages of publication: the investigation, computation,  experiment, program development,  static and animated graphical production, and textual explanations with inline typeset mathematics are carried out in a Maple 'worksheet'.

Maple is ideally suited to distance technical learning because only the source document (the worksheet) need be communicated from teacher to  student or visa-versa. The worksheet file  is an ascii file, usually a very small one, which is readily communicate by email. The graphics, computations, and other output are re-created by the recipient. This allows a highly technical report complete with graphics and calculations to be communicated by email as a ascii file, making the submission, correction, and return of technical  assignments a straightforward matter.

The Chisel Disk contains  a free MapleV4  worksheet reader which is suitable for viewing an executed worksheet.   In order to produce your own Maple worksheets, you will need to have access to a complete version of MapleV4.   The student version, which sells for under $100,  will suffice.

LaTeX   Since typesetting mathematics is not a problem the business community  usually faces in its daily activities, most if not all of the proprietary word  processing software, such as Word and WordPerfect have very limited mathematics typesetting capabilities built in.  The science and mathematics academic  communities get around this problem with a system called   LaTeX,  a macro-processor for a system called TeX which was created by Professor Donald Knuth of Stanford University in the mid  eighties. It is the international standard for mathematics, physics, and engineering. It was one of the reasons Dr. Knuth  received the Kyoto Prize for major contributions to science. The copyright is held by The American Mathematical Society which employs it for all of its publications - as do most of the word's major technical publishers.

 LaTeX permits anyone with access to a computer to produce formatted technical documents of textbook quality (indeed many books are created in this system).  The LaTeX user  employs his or her favorite text editor to create an ordinary ascii version of a document with inserted formatting commands. This   source document  is then processed with the formatting software to produce the typeset version. This processing can be done by anyone who has the source document and since it is a simple ascii file the source  can readily be communicated by email.

Mathematics communicated in the typeset version is difficult or impossible to modify.  If one has the Latex source document, however, it is simple to make minor or major changes in the document and then reprocess it locally.  LaTeX processors are available  free world-wide for all machines and the system is updated continuously by an international organization called TUG (Tex User Group).

The Chisel Disk  contains a (free) complete  LaTeX system called MiKTeX.   We will see how to use it to make scientific documents of all types, from  quizzes to books.
 

Part  2  Short Courses in the tools

    Basic Use of the Chisel Disk

• Searching the database
• reading dvi files with yap, ps files with gsview32
• reading mws files with Maple program
• reading tex files with wordpad
• Modifying and reformatting retrieved documents.

    A  short course in Elementary Maple

• The Maple worksheet.
• Getting Help.
• Maple for elementary calculation and plotting.
• Algebraic manipulations in Maple.
• Expressions,  expression sequences, and lists.
• Control statements: if .. then and for .. do
• Adding to Maple's vocabulary.
• Animation.   How to make movies in Maple.
• Trouble shooting.    Finding errors in your definitions.

    Elementary problem solving in a Maple worksheet

• Stating the problem in a textcell.
• Insertion of parameters into the problem.
• Solving the problem.  Insertion of commentary on the solution.
• Visual checking of solution.

   Maple as a mathematical text development system

• Making up tests, class handouts, problem sets, etc. in a Maple worksheet.
• Bookmarks and Hyperlinks.

    A short course in Elementary LaTeX

• Commands and environments.
• Document layout and organization.
• Typesetting mathematics.
• Insertion of diagrams and pictures.
• Changing fonts and other things.
• Using rootfiles to combine source documents.

    Exporting Maple to LaTeX

• How to export a Maple worksheet to a LaTeX source document.
• Making changes in the exported document.
• Use of  the perl script Mknotes.pl  to automate changes.
• Production of tests, class handouts, problem sets, etc. exported to LaTeX.

 Part 3 -- Towards Mastery of the Tools

    Images and Mathematical Communication

• Review of image formats: gif, tiff, jpg, postscript, etc.
• Maple Graphics and animation.
• Matrix representation of animations in printed text.
• Inclusion of external images in TeX and Maple documents.
• Taking images from video - use of inexpensive frame-grabbing equipment and image editors.
• Exporting Maple-generated images into TeX.
• Tools for producing simple external diagrams.

    Making  Books of  Maple worksheets

• What is a book of worksheets?
• Table of contents worksheet,  index worksheet.
• Use of perl scripts mkcontents.pl and mkindex.pl.
• From the Chisel Disk --  Problem Solving with Maple:  A handbook for Calculus Students.
• From the Chisel Disk --  Visual Problem Solving:  A text for Teachers.
• Modification and extension of a book of worksheets.

    Making LaTeX  Images of worksheet books.

• What is a LaTeX Image?
• Using mknotes.pl to produce a LaTeX Image.
• Samples on the Chisel Disk:  Problem Solving with Maple and Visual Problem Solving.
• Modifying a LaTeX Image.

    Making   Books from a LaTeX source.

• From the Chisel Disk:   Calculus I by  Neal Koblitz  on the Chisel Disk.
• The organization of the book.
• Modifying the book.