Mathematics

Illinois Wesleyan University
For price and performance, NeXT is the answer

Reproduced with permission from NeXT Computer, Inc.
A Reference Guide to NeXT in Higher Education, Fall 1992
ยช 1992 NeXT Computer, Inc


When the Department of Mathematics at Illinois Wesleyan University decided to purchase new computers for a laboratory classroom, Assistant Professor Robin Sanders found herself the only UNIX expert among a faculty that was predisposed to DOS. The department considered several UNIX-based systems, including Sun and NeXT. In the end, the department chose NeXT for its price, performance, and ease of use.

"NeXT fit the bill perfectly," says Sanders. "NeXT is more powerful than the PCs we could afford, and it was the only UNIX-based system in our price range. Plus, it's the only workstation that supports Mathematica Notebooks."

A convert from other UNIX platforms, Sanders adds, "NeXT beats Sun hands down. The graphical interface is superior, and NeXT machines have an incredibly crisp screen which is necessary for doing mathematics on a computer. The Suns don't have the same degree of resolution."

Once the NeXT machines were installed at Illinois Wesleyan, Department Chair Melvyn Jeter approached Sanders about teaching Calculus I with the computers. Sanders welcomed the opportunity to revamp the course.

"Most freshman calculus students," she explains, "seem to have the feeling that mathematics came down to mathematicians complete-everything about mathematics has been discovered, and teachers are there simply to tell students the theorems and provide homework exercises. In this course, I wanted to show students they have the potential to make discoveries in the world of mathematics."

Sanders scrapped her traditional lecture-based curriculum in favor of teaching more than 20 students using NeXT machines, Mathematica, and Calculus&Mathematica, an innovative one-year curriculum developed at the University of Illinois.

Working with a set of Mathematica Notebooks that students complete at a rate of two per week, students solve complicated problems-all of which have real-world implications. Students learn to identify mathematical patterns and, ultimately, derive the calculus principles on which the patterns are based. Ordinarily, Sanders holds class discussions on the practical significance of the problems.

In one exercise, for example, students are asked to to determine whether the U.S. population has grown exponentially throughout history. After solving the problem, the class discusses factors that might have accounted for population growth spurts.

Another exercise asks students to read a New York Times article on the half-life of a radioactive chemical used to produce nuclear weapons. Students compute the half-life of the chemical; and the class then examines the implication of the chemical's short half-life.

"This is a far better way of teaching mathematics," says Sanders. "Students have to do much more thinking this way. And Mathematica is significantly easier to use on NeXT than on any other platform. Its graphical interface makes it easy for students to get comfortable quickly."

Looking ahead, Sanders says she and her colleagues are planning more NeXT-based classes for the mathematics curriculum. One professor is teaching a parallel processing course using NeXT technology, while several faculty members and students are working on a NeXT-based research project dealing with prime-number theory. In addition to the calculus courses, Illinois Wesleyan offers an upper-division mathematical modeling lab, using NeXT technology, Mathematica, and TEX.

For more information, please contact:

Robin Sanders
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
Illinois Wesleyan University
Bloomington, IL 61702
(309) 556-3146
sanders@symcom.math.uiuc.edu