A Scheme for Demonstrating and Improving the Effect of CAS Use in Mathematics Education

摘要

Owing to its superb drawing utilities and symbolic computation capabilities, computer algebra system (CAS) has become one of the most preferred tools for drawing scientific artworks. However, according to the result of our questionnaire survey, many collegiate mathematics teachers in Japan feel difficulty in effectively using the graphics generated by CAS in printed materials. For instance, quite a number of mathematics teachers in universities are using TeX as their daily tool for editing high-quality mathematical documents, but the use of graphics generated by CAS in TeX documents seems not to be so easy task for usual TeX users. This difficulty seems to prevent many teachers from using CAS graphics. To fill this gap, some dynamic geometry softwares (DGS) and others have been equipped with the capability to export TeX-readable code of their graphical output. Also the authors have developed a macro package KETpic designed for CAS to supply high-quality graphics in TeX documents. In this paper, we will propose a scheme for demonstrating and improving the effect of CAS use in mathematics education. Through this scheme, it is shown that we can greatly improve the educational effect of our mathematics class materials by appropriately using the precise 2D-graphics generated by CAS and KETpic.