[ale] graphing calculator

[Ed Cashin]

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 1:28 PM, drifter <drifter at oppositelock.org> wrote:
> Gentle folk,
> my brother needs your help.
> He is retired navigator for the USN. Now tutoring kids in math in
> New Bern, NC, and finds the textbooks (middle school/high school)
> the kids are forced to use just about impossible.  From his point of
> view he is amazed they can learn any algebra/geometry/trig at all.
>
> So he is struggling to write his own textbook he can give to the teens he
> is working with.  To that end he needs an app (windoze, cough, cough)
> that will allow him to input an algebraic equation and get out a graph in
> a file format (jpg, etc) that he can then import into the Open Office file
> he is creating.
>
> I will take credit on weaning him away from Office. :)

On Linux I use GNU R, a clone of S from Bell Labs.  It has a
download for Windows (that I've never used but suspect would
work, because lots of statisticians seem to use Windows.)

  http://cran.mirrors.hoobly.com/

He will like R a lot if he is a geek and likes statistics.  Here's
how he'd use it for y = x^2.  The stuff I typed is on the right of
the "> " prompt.

> seq(1,20)
 [1]  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
> x <- seq(1,100)
> y <- x ** 2
> plot(x, y, type="l")
> dev.copy2eps(file="/tmp/square.ps")
X11cairo
       2
> system("convert /tmp/square.ps /tmp/square.jpg")
>

I guess if he doesn't/can't install ImageMagick for Windows, then
he'll have to find some alternative to "convert".  And for publication,
you'd need to take more care in the rasterizing step.

-- 
  Ed Cashin <ecashin at noserose.net>
  http://noserose.net/e/
  http://www.coraid.com/