Re: [Maxima-discuss] Feature request: step by step

[Brent M. <mee...@gm...>]

Right.  And differential equations is a competency test for calculus.

Brent

On 1/14/2026 12:12 PM, Richard Fateman wrote:
> I have a particularly cynical view of required calc courses.
> What would be lost if we just admitted that some percentage of 
> students really
> never learned this stuff, but just hired a human tutor or asked an AI 
> bot to
> do the homework/ show all work / cheated on exams / got a passing grade?
>
> I suspect passing the required calc course is, in reality, a 
> competency test for algebra
> (presumably it is necessary to do algebra for calc...),  and calc per 
> se is not needed for,
> say, the lifetime activities of economics majors, should we be asking 
> questions about
> what students should be taught?  And how (by youtube??)
>
> (My wife, who studied philosophy in college ... no calc..., yes logic 
> ..., retired
> years ago from her job as the director of central computing at UC 
> Berkeley. She
> told me at that time  -- "See, I never used /cosine/.")
>
> RJF
>
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2026 at 11:57 AM Raymond Toy <toy...@gm...> 
> wrote:
>
>     On 1/14/26 11:19 AM, Richard Fateman wrote:
>
>>     If you are expecting Maxima to improve your math skills as in
>>     some of the on-line tutoring programs,
>>     by some nearly automatic process  (like tracing existing
>>     programs), that is highly unlikely to work.
>>
>>     Elaborating on Stavros' note -- typically Maxima DOES NOT USE THE
>>     STEPS USED BY BEGINNING
>>     STUDENTS OF ALGEBRA, CALCULUS, ETC.
>
>     Exactly.
>
>     But really, what is the goal of seeing the step-by-step solution?
>     If you're a calc 1 student, would it be useful to know that uses
>     keyhole integration over the complex plane to evaluate some
>     definite integrals? I suppose for motivated students, that would
>     encourage them to learn new math, but I suspect that would
>     basically turn off most students. (Perhaps even worse now when you
>     hear stories about how college students can't do basic arithmetic.)
>
>     And would this be better done by looking up Youtube videos that
>     explain how to solve interesting problems? I think blackpenredpen
>     is really good for calc 1/2 level math. For more interesting
>     questions, I like Michael Penn. Maths 505 has really interesting
>     integration and diffeq problems. Maxima can't do most of them, I
>     think.
>
>     There are zillions of math channels on Youtube.
>
>>
>>     2. There is a mystique of "calculus is hard, uses heuristics,
>>     requires intelligence and problem-solving" promoted by
>>     teachers, textbooks, etc.
>     Well, I think that's kind of true when it comes to integration. If
>     you watch Maths 505 doing integrals, many of them uses insights
>     that I would not think of doing. Maybe I could, if I spent enough
>     time to thinking about them, but probably not.
>     &#8203;
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