Developed by Michael Barry (mbarry@alleg.edu), Department of Mathematics, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA 16335.
Discipline: Mathematics
Bisection is an application which allows the student to explore the Bisection Method for finding zeros of continuous functions. It handles the calculations while leaving the decision about in which subinterval to look for the zero in the student's hands.
The f(x)=, left endpoint, and right endpoint fields are all parsed by a parser, MiniMath, which recognizes a subset of Mathematica function expressions.
MiniMath recognizes the following functions: Abs, ArcTan, Cos, Cot, Csc, Exp, Log, Sec, Sin, Sqrt, and Tan, and the constants Pi and E. It does not recognize Log[b,x], which can of course be entered as Log[x]/Log[b].
It recognizes appropriate spaces as multiplication, but it does not recognize (x+y)z with no space between the parenthesis and z as a product. In particular 2x must be written as 2 x or 2*x.
Courses that use Bisection at Allegheny College include Calculus 1, and Introduction to Differential Calculus.
This application was developed under NeXTstep release 2.0.
