On 07/02/2008, Jelle de Jong <address@hidden> wrote:
The software that is used is called Derive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derive_computer_algebra_system
For a real FLOSS user this is not an option, so I went trying out all
the mathematical tools for GNU/Linux. I think octave is the program that
should be able to do all the calculations and visualisations on the
functions I use.
Octave is mostly for numerical analysis, not symbolic manipulations.
There have been some hacks in the past to get it to interface with
Maxima, which is a real CAS like Derive, but those attempts never seem
to get very far.
If you want a free CAS, try Maxima instead of Octave. It may also be
worthwhile to look at Sage (http://www.sagemath.org), which can
interface to both Maxima and Octave, and has a very rich functionality
of its own too.
HTH,
- Jordi G. H.