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Re: [Maxima-discuss] Feature request: step by step
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From: Barton W. <wi...@un...> - 2026-01-14 23:12:28
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The economic "marginal" is often a finite difference, not a derivative. But I once read that Alan Greenspan (former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve) did calculus problems at night for fun and relaxation. --Barton ________________________________ From: Stavros Macrakis <mac...@gm...> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2026 2:58 PM To: Richard Fateman <fa...@gm...> Cc: max...@li... <max...@li...> Subject: Re: [Maxima-discuss] Feature request: step by step Caution: Non-NU Email Well, actually, one of the most important and basic concepts in economics is the differential, known as the "marginal X". And the criterion for equilibrium in classical microeconomics is "equalizing the marginal utilities". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility__;!!PvXuogZ4sRB2p-tU!GPGbdXiWz6R7-DFo-GOrXPtkWzyK4AAnYsmelsiN1gjbSTja7fbGvO6y5vkfk39f0q5-hrg6eJZ0Z_Y$> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossen%27s_second_law<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossen*27s_second_law__;JQ!!PvXuogZ4sRB2p-tU!GPGbdXiWz6R7-DFo-GOrXPtkWzyK4AAnYsmelsiN1gjbSTja7fbGvO6y5vkfk39f0q5-hrg6VGZUWE8$> On Wed, Jan 14, 2026 at 12:13 PM Richard Fateman <fa...@gm...<mailto:fa...@gm...>> 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...<mailto: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. ​ _______________________________________________ Maxima-discuss mailing list Max...@li...<mailto:Max...@li...> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/maxima-discuss<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/maxima-discuss__;!!PvXuogZ4sRB2p-tU!GPGbdXiWz6R7-DFo-GOrXPtkWzyK4AAnYsmelsiN1gjbSTja7fbGvO6y5vkfk39f0q5-hrg6jlsS6zU$> _______________________________________________ Maxima-discuss mailing list Max...@li...<mailto:Max...@li...> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/maxima-discuss<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/maxima-discuss__;!!PvXuogZ4sRB2p-tU!GPGbdXiWz6R7-DFo-GOrXPtkWzyK4AAnYsmelsiN1gjbSTja7fbGvO6y5vkfk39f0q5-hrg6jlsS6zU$> |
