1 / 8

Software Requirements for Interactive Mathematics Textbooks

Software Requirements for Interactive Mathematics Textbooks. Catherine Schell CSC 509 Winter 2005. Introduction. New phase of work on paper from 508 Goal for first phase: develop a set of requirements for interactive mathematics textbooks. I developed a set of goals

strom
Download Presentation

Software Requirements for Interactive Mathematics Textbooks

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Software Requirements for Interactive Mathematics Textbooks Catherine Schell CSC 509 Winter 2005

  2. Introduction • New phase of work on paper from 508 • Goal for first phase: develop a set of requirements for interactive mathematics textbooks. • I developed a set of goals • I translated several of the goals into requirements that could be refuted, measured, and tested • Goal for second phase: evaluate a computer algebra system and an interactive mathematics textbook using my set of goals.

  3. Previous Work • Previous work: two approaches used are • Develop a set of requirements for IMT’s • Point out problems with other IMT’s and computer algebra systems (CAS’s), then describe a newly developed IMT that fixes those problems.

  4. Previous Attempts to Develop a Set of Requirements • Two papers found that attempt to develop a set of requirements: • Robert Sinclair, “Interactive Mathematics Textbooks” ACM SIGPLAN Notices, February 2003 • Carol Scheftic,“Interactive Mathematics Texts: Ideas for Developers” Proceedings of the Maple Summer Workshop and Symposium on Mathematical Computation with Maple V: Ideas and Applications, June 28 – 30, 1993.

  5. Previous Attempts to Develop a Set of Requirements cont’d • One paper presented a survey of CAS’s, and described some problems: • Norbert Kajler and Neil Soiffer, “A Survey of User Interfaces for Computer Algebra Systems” Journal of Symbolic Computation, 25 (1998). • Problems described were • Expressions are entered in a linear syntax. • Selecting and editing expressions, either using commands or a mouse, is problematic. • Expressions are not displayed well.

  6. Open Problems • The requirements listed aren’t really requirements, since they are not refutable, measurable, or testable. • They are more accurately described as goals. • I was able to translate several of the goals into requirements

  7. Evaluating an IMT and a CAS • These are the systems that I chose to evaluate: • LiveMath Maker (CAS) • ALEKS - Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces; IMT) • Reasons for choosing these systems: • Developed for algebra students • ALEKS is used in two lower-division math courses at Cal Poly • Free trial use • Evaluated them using the set of goals • I also evaluated IMT’s and CAS’s using the requirements I developed • Literature review

  8. Conclusion • Hopefully this paper will serve as a basis for further work in IMT’s and CAS’s • More complete requirements • Better ideas for design of user interface

More Related