SCILAB: TEACHING MATHEMATICS WITH A COMPUTATIONAL TOOLDavid Angulo Rubio

WHAT IS SCILAB

MOTIVATION

The way mathematics courses are being developed. Students have to struggle to against abstractions and do not get to see any of the applications.

Mathematical concepts are important in order to understand the results supplied by Scilab

Teaching mathematics could be definitively more effective if suitable computational methodology and software were introduced

TOOLBOXES AVAILABLE

SCILAB ENVIRONMENT AND BASIC FUNCTIONS

Scilab has the ability to store values, so that they can be used later

COMPARISONS AND LOGICAL OPERATORS

ScilLab provides the user with a number of programming constructs very similar to those available in Fortran and other high-level languages.

WORKSPACE AND WORKING DIRECTORY

Scilab Environment Visible Workspace Memory Space where all

variables and functions are stored. It’s useful to check this workspace to check

where a variable or function has been defined or not

LOOPS IN SCILAB FOR

WHILE:

CONDITIONAL CONSTRUCTS IN SCILAB

MATRIX OPERATIONSMatrix Operations built-in into SciLab:•Addition, •Subtraction•Multiplication •Transpose •Inversion •Determinant,•Trigonometric •Logarithmic •Exponential, and many others

MATRIX OPERATIONS

SUB-MATRICES

SELECT-CASE

SCILAB SCRIPTS OR PROGRAMS.

Type the following SCILAB script into afile called prog1.txt

STATISTICS

FUNCTIONS IN SCILAB

FUNCTION EXAMPLE: CALCULATION OF FROBENIUS NORM OF A MATRIX

PLOT COMMAND: SIMPLE X-Y PLOTSIn the solutions of linear or nonlinear equations, it is often convenientto be able to plot the function to visualize the location of the roots of the function

PLOT COMMAND: SIMPLE X-Y PLOTS

PLOTTING DATA IN 3D

3D GRAPHS USING GRIDS

DATA FITTING AND INTERPOLATION

SIMPLE LINEAR INTERPOLATION

SIMPLE LINEAR INTERPOLATION

SIMPLE LINEAR INTERPOLATION

POLYNOMIALS IN SCILABDEFINING A POLYNOMIAL : IDENTIFYING VARIABLE, DEGREE AND COEFFICIENTS

OPERATIONS WITH POLYNOMIALS

POLYNOMIAL FRACTIONS

MATRICES WITH POLYNOMIAL ELEMENTS

DETERMINANT OF A POLYNOMIAL MATRIX

EVALUATING A POLYNOMIAL OR POLYNOMIAL MATRIX

REFERENCES

Urroz, G.,2001,“Programming with SCILAB” Urroz, G.,2001,“Graphics with SCILAB” Urroz, G.,2001,“Introduccion to SCILAB” Annigeri,S.,2004,“ SCILAB: A Hands On

Introduction” Urroz, G.,2001,“Data Fitting and Interpolation

with SCILAB” Benmahammed , K.,2010,“SCILAB” Campbell, L. Chancelier,J. and Nikoukhah,

R.,2006,“Modeling and Simulation in Scilab/Scicos”