Re: Octave download statistics

[J. Brian Adams]

I have been using it in two undergraduate classes; computational  
mathematics and computational probability and simulation.  My goal  
has been to avoid canned packages and require the students to write  
the algorithms themselves.  Further, I do not want these courses to  
become followups of programming in Java or C++, especially since they  
are open to (and the majority of registrants are) non-CS students.  I  
have found that Octave provides a simple language that is  
understandable to both the computer science students and the non- 
computer science students alike.

Of course it is not without its difficulties.  The single recurring  
problem is an objection to using it by a minority of the CS  
students.  Although they have never used it before, for some reason  
they immediately consider it a toy language and thus do not want to  
be bothered learning it.  Most do though, and of those, several have  
commented about being glad to be able use it in other classes and  
even later when they begin research in graduate school.


On Dec 13, 2006, at 10:28 PM, Tom Holroyd wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Dec 2006, J. Brian Adams wrote:
> > I use Octave in my classes.  To simplify the whole process I create a
> > CD with binary distributions of Octave and gnuplot and an install
> > script that I wrote.
>
> Hi Brian. What sort of classes do you teach?
>
> Tom Holroyd, Ph.D.
> We experience the world not as it is, but as we expect it to be.
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