Basic Idea - A system to do all the symbolic manipulation of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, statistics, calculus.

Used by whom? Engineers, mathematicians, educators, students, any user of mathematics.

• These systems are becoming very comprehensive, including more and more numerical methods (in addition to symbolic), and powerful graphic and visualization capabilities.

• If you have a modeling or problem solving task in which the natural language is mathematics, then these systems are very powerful.

• Essentially arbitrarily accurate integer arithmetic is possible because integers are represented as arbitrarily long strings of symbols, and arithmetic is carried out in software, not in hardware.

Famous examples: Macsyma, Mathematica, Maple, Prolog, LISP.

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Last Updated 04/16/2000
© L.Heath, 2000