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Using wxMaxima Symbolic Math Software

The PC Lab in PSB 208 has the computer software wxMaxima installed. Maxima is a fairly complete computer algebra system written in lisp with an emphasis on symbolic computation. It is based on DOE-MACSYMA which was developed over several decades starting in the 1960's. It is licensed under the General Public License or GPL (see Wikipedia for more information). Its abilities include symbolic algebra, calculus, plotting, and differential equations. It also has nice animation features.

The software is available for free on Windows, Mac and Linux computers:

Download Site
(Download and install the latest version of Maxima.)

Calculus Demonstration Sessions

Below are a collection of wxMaxima sessions which are saved with the file names *.wxm. Clicking on these file links will open them in wxMaxima and you can modify and experiment with them to learn how to use the program. In addition, for each session there is a PDF version which can viewed using the Adobe Reader.

Some of the programs use just basic operations and graphing while others are somewhat sophisticated. They use the more powerful drawing package and animation features. In either case, you need only click the wxm link and view the inputs and outputs. Note that you will need to evaluate each expression in the files below by clicking the expression and then using Shift-Enter to evaluate it.

Some of the complicated animations will take a few seconds to load so be patient. Once the slides have been produced you click the graph window and use the slider on the top menu bar to view the animation.

Rev. 8/2008