Software Requirements for Interactive Mathematics Textbooks Catherine Schell CSC 509 Winter 2005

Introduction  New phase of work on paper from 508  Goal for first phase: develop a set of requirements for interactive mathematics textbooks. I developed a set of goals I translated several of the goals into requirements that could be refuted, measured, and tested  Goal for second phase: evaluate a computer algebra system and an interactive mathematics textbook using my set of goals.

Previous Work  Previous work: two approaches used are Develop a set of requirements for IMT’s Point out problems with other IMT’s and computer algebra systems (CAS’s), then describe a newly developed IMT that fixes those problems.

Previous Attempts to Develop a Set of Requirements  Two papers found that attempt to develop a set of requirements: Robert Sinclair, “Interactive Mathematics Textbooks” ACM SIGPLAN Notices, February 2003 Carol Scheftic,“Interactive Mathematics Texts: Ideas for Developers” Proceedings of the Maple Summer Workshop and Symposium on Mathematical Computation with Maple V: Ideas and Applications, June 28 – 30, 1993.

Previous Attempts to Develop a Set of Requirements cont’d  One paper presented a survey of CAS’s, and described some problems: Norbert Kajler and Neil Soiffer, “A Survey of User Interfaces for Computer Algebra Systems” Journal of Symbolic Computation, 25 (1998).  Problems described were Expressions are entered in a linear syntax.linear syntax Selecting and editing expressions, either using commands or a mouse, is problematic. Selecting and editing expressions Expressions are not displayed well.not displayed well

Open Problems  The requirements listed aren’t really requirements, since they are not refutable, measurable, or testable. They are more accurately described as goals. I was able to translate several of the goals into requirements

Evaluating an IMT and a CAS  These are the systems that I chose to evaluate: LiveMath Maker (CAS) LiveMath Maker ALEKS - Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces; IMT) ALEKS  Reasons for choosing these systems: Developed for algebra students ALEKS is used in two lower-division math courses at Cal Poly Free trial use  Evaluated them using the set of goals  I also evaluated IMT’s and CAS’s using the requirements I developed Literature review

Conclusion  Hopefully this paper will serve as a basis for further work in IMT’s and CAS’s More complete requirements Better ideas for design of user interface