Developed by Michael Barry (mbarry@alleg.edu), Department of Mathematics, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA 16335.
Discipline: Mathematics
SimulPlot is an application which allows the student to explore graphically the relationship between a function and its derivative before that material is presented in class.
The f(x)=, a, and b 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.
Mathematica itself is called for the calculation of the derivative.
Courses that use the SimulPlot at Allegheny College include Calculus 1 and Introduction to Differential Calculus.
This application was developed under NeXTstep release 2.0.
Since SimulPlot calls Mathematica, Mathematica must available.
