Welcome to the Mathematical Sciences Department
and Faculty of Science Special Needs software.

Special Needs Packages available in M123 on the 2 PCs nearest the wall

UNIX Packages available on Sun machines.

- is a general testing shell within which Maths Staff may place tests for any module.

- is where you should give your views on all Maths modules i.e. those modules with codes starting MA, ST or MS. The questionnaires are administered by Dr Martin Greenhow. Your responses are technically not anonymous, but individual views will not be communicated to the lecturer concerned, who will only see whole-class views. At present these are turned off but may become available following discussions with staff and students.

- tests your basic Maths skills and writes answer files. It is primarily designed as a formative testing facility for material you have already seen, not to learn new material. Mathletics includes full instructions in the entry screens. Topics covered include:

• Diagnostic tests at GCSE level
• Diagnostic tests at A level
• Algebra tests
• Arithmetic tests
• Complex Numbers
• Determinants
• Differentiation
• Functions
• Integration
• Laplace Transforms
• Ordinary Differential Equations
• Vectors
• Pentathlons, Decathlons and Marathons.

... and many more. Mathletics spans 175 topics and comprises 4500 questions.

Last academic year some 600 students took over 23,000 tests ... surely they must have learned something!

- provides a learning environment in which students do projects involving first order logic and formal proofs. It is primarily designed as a formative facility for experimentation with material you have already seen, not to learn new material.

- presents, using hypertext, maths beyond A level and covering the SEFI syllabus for the Mathematics for European Engineers . There are 3 Mathwise icons as follows:

• Mathwise Pre-calculus - use this later version if possible
• Mathwise Calculus - use this later version if possible
• Mathwise - old version: very complete but contains no assessment and some bugs!

No answer files are written, but a large amount of interaction takes place with the student, especially in the Pre-Calculus and Calculus Cluster modules where self-assessment is possible if entered using the Mathwise Pre-Calculus or Mathwise Calculus icons.

The following topics are available for PC on the Brunel Network.

• Graphs of functions (with self-assessment)
• Inequalities (with self-assessment)
• Real Numbers and Algebra (with self-assessment)
• Polynomials, Series and Logs (with self-assessment)
• Linear Equations and Matrices
• Trigonometric Functions (with self-assessment)
• Standard Curves and Conics
• Euclidean Geometry
• Rules of Differentiation
• Maxima and Minima
• Standard Techniques in Integration
• Integration 1
• Complex Numbers (with self-assessment)
• Sequences and Series
• Solution of Linear Equations
• Basic Vector Algebra (with self-assessment)
• Linear Programming
• Multiple Integration
• Higher-order Ordinary Differential Equations
• Numerical solution of Ordinary Differential Equations
• Algebraic Structures
• Application in Astronomy
• Applications of Differential Equations
• Application in Biology
• Applications in Earth Sciences
• Applications in Discrete Mathematics
• Mechanics
• Coding Theory
• Mathematical Modelling in Sport Sciences
• Mathematical Biographies (also in Pre-Calculus Cluster)

- a symbolic manipulator to do maths (useful for really hard problems). This does not teach at all, but algebra, calculus, linear algebra, etc and graph plotting may be done; graphs may be placed on the clipboard for pasting into other Windows applications such as Word. Online help is limited - you really need someone to show you how!

Derive's mathematics notebooks that cover special functions and high-level macros may be opened from l:\derivew\math .

Notebooks designed by final year project student Jodie Meacham to illustrate the ideas of calculus via pictures are available from l:\derivew\brunel
Please read the instructions at the end of these notebooks.

- presents, using hypertext, maths bridging the A-level to first year undergraduate courses in science and engineering. Very good. Answer files are written to the group you select e.g. ma98 and the system detects your userid automatically. (If you cannot find a group corresponding to the first 4 characters of your userid, use the xxxx group instead). A large amount of interaction takes place with the student.The following topics are available.

• Algebra
• Trigonometry
• Vectors
• Calculus
• Matrices
• Complex numbers
• Sequences and series
• Numerical methods
• Functions
• Revision

Very similar to Derive but includes both symbolic manipulation and word processing. The result is very much like a Mathematica notebook, but less powerful.

- a hypertext document, written in Toolbook by Dr Martin Reed at Brunel, covering Interpolation and Numerical Solution of ODEs.

- not too sure about this - it appears to be a way of teaching elementary maths by building function machines, flow charts etc.

- a programming language.

Physics lab simulations covering topics of interest to both mathematicians and engineers; see the very helpful demo first, then open the Albert folders by clicking the Albert Applications and Albert Applications 2 icons. These contain many experiments covering a wide range of undergraduate physics.
Have fun!

The tables are an online version of the book by Gradshteyn and Ryzhik - useful for postgrads and final year students.
First time users can click on Dynatext Documentation in the upper window and take the tutorial.
To go to the content of the CD, operate searches, insert bookmarks, download TeX code for the formulae etc, double click Tables of Integrals, Series and Products, fifth edition in the lower window.

ODE Architect

TkEclipse

To run Eclipse with the Tk interface

• First delete the following user variables using
  Start->Settings->Control Panel->System->Environment
• TCL_LIBRARY
• TK_LIBRARY

FortMP

FortMP is a major industrial strength solver for mathematical programming problems in LP (Linear Programming), MIP (Mixed Integer Programming), QP (Quadratic Programming) and MIQP (Quadratic Programming with mixed integer variables). It is available in the following forms

• as a stand-alone program
• as a solver DLL to be used with MPL and AMPL modelling languages -
• as a subroutine library for specialised use for specific problems or research.

The DLL version of FortMP is available to all our students, via the net, by calling it through the windows modelling package, MPL. PhD students and other special projects have access to the stand-alone program or to the subroutine library on the PCs in our high-performance computing library.

ViaVoice Executive

This is a voice dictation package for those who have difficulty with typing. You will need to establish a voice profile on the supporting PC in M123. Note: Dication packages, like ViaVoice, may not be especially useful for those with dyslexia.

Mathematica 3

This is a powerful industry- and research-standard symbolic manipulator with excellent graphics. To access Mathematica 3:

1) login to a Sun machine

2) at the Unix % prompt in the "cmdtool/bin/csh" box type use math

3) at the Unix % prompt type mathematica&

4) wait patiently!

Constraint Logic Programming Environment

To run:

From a SUN UNIX prompt

Type: use eclipse_4.0

Follow instructions.

MATLAB is a program for computation and visualization. The word MATLAB is a contraction of ``Matrix Laboratory'' which relates to it origins as a convenient tool for the manipulation of matrices. It has since added much more functionality and it can now be conveniently used for a wide range of numerical and graphical applications.

Before you can use MATLAB you need to type the following at the unix prompt.

--type>> use matlab

Preparation before MATLAB is started

If you are using MATLAB on a SUN workstation then an effective use of MATLAB requires at least 2 working windows: One window in which the MATLAB session is run and at least one window for creating MATLAB script files and/or MATLABfunction files. It is highly desirable that you change directory to the area containing your MATLAB files and you set up these windows before MATLAB is started. To assist in this operation I suggest that you type on the first occasion that you use matlab the following 2 lines

--type>> ~icstmkw/bin/ma1051

--type>> source .mkwaaa

This sets up certain Unix aliases which you will automatically have the next time that you login.

Then, and on all subsequent occasions, you can just type

--type>> sxxx1

or

--type>> sxxx2

or

--type>> sxxx3

or

--type>> sxxx4

to create suitably positioned and sized windows for use. The windows created in this way enable use of the arrow keys in MATLAB to step back and edit previously typed commands. This is an important feature in MATLAB which is not available if you start MATLAB in a default openwin window.

Starting MATLAB

In a suitable X-window, possibly set up as above, type

--type>> matlab

To exit MATLAB you type

--type>> quit

LaTeX2e is the leading typesetting language for technical publications which contain mathematical symbols. It is the language of choice for most mathematical journals and it is widely used by publishers of mathematical texts. It is also a free and very widely used and supported package with several mirrored Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN) sites existing around the world the nearest one to Brunel being at

ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/

It is not a ``what you see is what you get'' type of word processor language but requires that the user creates an ASCII file with a text editor which contains various control sequences to control the formatting which, in this sense, makes it more like a programming language. It is this programming/macro creation facility which makes it so powerful and despite the apparent disadvantage of not being wyswig, as compared to a word processor, it has facilities for conveniently viewing the formatted output on almost every platform. In addition, being a typesetter, it is always likely to produce superior quality output as compared to a word processor.

To use the latest version of LaTeX (LaTeX2e) that I am aware of on the SUN Unix network, and which I installed in October 1999,you need to type the following at the Unix prompt.

--type>> source ~icstmkw/bin/tetex.st

This only needs to be typed once per login session.

Assuming that you know how to create a LaTeX file which you have named as abc.tex then you process it by typing

--type>> latex abc

If you are using a workstation then you can view the formatted output by typing

--type>> xdvi abc

To create a 600dpi PostScript file called abc.ps you type

--type>> dvips abc

abc.ps can then be sent to a PostScript printer or converted by ghostscript to 600 dpi laserjet form and sent to a laserjet printer.

You can manipulate the PostScript file involving reducing in size A4 pages to A5 size and putting 2 such A5 pages onto 1 A4 page by the command

--type>> psnup -2 abc.ps >abca5.ps

The new PostScript file abca5.ps will print to about half the number of pages compared with the original file abc.ps .

In addition to being able to create PostScript you can also create directly a 600dpi laserjet file suitable for a laserjet 4 printer or better with, for example in the case of abc.dvi existing, the command

--type>> dvilj4 abc

The file created is called abc.lj

To access a suite of programming languages on the SUN's including the Fortran compiler f77, the C compiler cc and a C++ compiler you need to type

--type>> use sunpro

In the case of a Fortran source file called abc.f or abc.for you type

--type>> f77 abc.f

or

--type>> f77 abc.for

as appropriate to create the executable file which has, by default, the name a.out .

Similarly, if you have a C source file called abc.c then you type

--type>> cc abc.c

to create the executable file which has, by default, the name a.out .

If you wish to use instead the GNU compilers, and many more GNU programs, such as gcc then you need to first type

--type>> use gnu

If your program wishes to call routines from the NAG library then you need to first type

--type>> use nag

Then, to compile a Fortran program caled abc.f which references a NAG routine (and assuming that you have already typed use sunpro) you type

--type>> f77 abc.f -lnag

to create the executable file a.out .