Maths tutorial software

June 12, 2005 2:22 AM

I am trying to find some good interactive Maths tutorial software which goes from basic algebra through to Differential Equations and maybe beyond. Can anyone recommend anything with the emphasis on the interactive side - something which can keep me interested so nothing too dry - a nice colorful multimedia approach would be ideal.
posted by empedia to Education (2 answers total)

I'm not aware of any software package that does what you're looking for. However, you might consider poking around some distance learning curriculum from various colleges/universities, which generally does exactly what you're talking about, except emphasis isn't always on the interactive side. MIT's opencourseware is an example, but only kicks in at the calculus level, which won't get you algebra and trig (there are algebra courses listed, but they're abstract algebra, not basic algebra).

You may want also want to consider getting a hold of a piece of software that makes math visualizations easy and doing some experimenting in it. This could be something like Mathematica or Maple... or even just Flash. It's somewhat unlikely to teach you certain kinds of principles, but if it can give you a "feel" for things, that can help you later.

I'll see if I can think of anything else.
posted by weston at 11:15 AM on June 12, 2005

Check out Newt which is a nice little graphing program. It doesn't cover Algebra but has some nice graphing functions for Diff Equations. My old university uses it I believe as a teaching aid for it's 1st year math courses.
posted by PenDevil at 12:47 PM on June 12, 2005