Precal Blog

[Note: When I typed this post originally I forgot that Internet Explorer stinks. Everyone should be using Firefox - it is superior to IE in every way. If you insist on using IE then there are two files you need to install. One is Adobe's SVG Viewer (which will no longer be supported after 1/1/08, and the other is Design Science's MathPlayer. Even with those files installed, I still can't get IE to display correctly. Download Firefox!

[Yet another note: Even though I had the most current version of Firefox (2.0.0.7) I still needed to install some fonts to get all of the notation to show up correctly. It is quick and easy to do and you can get them here.]

`f(x)=(x-2)(x-1)x(x+1)(x+2)/2`

agraph
width=300; height=200; xmin=-5; xmax=5; xscl=1;
plot((x-2)*(x-1)*x*(x+1)*(x+2)/2,-1.5,2);
endagraph

Typing in this function and creating its graph are extremely easy thanks to ASCIIMath. Double click on the graph and study the code you see. Do you see the simple, intuitive commands that were used to plot the function? Do you see how to restrict the domain? Play around with it and just refresh the page to start over.

To include mathematical notation in your post, just type it in like you “think” you should – but surround it with left-quotes. On my keyboard the left quote is with the tilde (~). So if I wanted to type in the quadratic formula normally it would look terrible: (-b +- sqrt(b^2-4ac))/(2a).
But use the left quotes around it and get: `(-b+-sqrt(b^2-4ac))/(2a)`.

Beautiful.

While you are posting comments here or updating the Wiki, you may want to incorporate some mathematical symbols like these: ∴ σ Σ < ≈ π ℜ

This link shows you the code to use.