Mathwright and Mathplay

Mathwright (© James White) is an authoring program for Windows that may be used to create interactive mathematics and science texts. These interactive "workbooks" are read with Mathplay. The Mathwright Library is an on-line collection of WorkBooks written by many different teachers of mathematics. The web site makes available for downloading a Library Player which may be used as a viewer for the workbooks in the library. All the workbooks, as well as the Player, are free.

My own contributions to the Mathwright library follow. Descriptions of each workbook are available at the library web site.

Differential equations collection		Others
The Slope Field		Introduction to Mathwright
Euler's Method		The Pendulum
Modeling Populations		Chaos
Temperature		Animations
Bifurcation		Light
Parametric Equations		The Virtual Lab
The Phase Plane
Spring Lab
Pendulum Lab
DE Tools

I have used Mathwright as the principal software in two courses: differential equations (for junior level math majors) and chaos and fractals (a freshman general education course).

More about Mathwright

The workbooks created with Mathwright may be read by students in private study, or used in various classroom teaching and learning contexts. For example, they may contain simulations, lessons, laboratory exercises, and animations. The Player provides a great deal of freedom to experiment and to create. Readers can make files such as:

reports with formatted mathematical text, matrices and pictures;
bitmaps of graphics objects;
programs and scripts;
data files that are small spreadsheets;
text files.

The "customize" features allow the reader to recall changes she has made to a workbook, making it more her own.

Mathwright and its components were designed and written by James E. White, as co-director of the MAA Interactive Mathematics Text Project, and with support from the (former) Institute for Academic Technology at UNC Chapel Hill. The system was developed in continuous collaboration with hundreds of teachers of mathematics and science at the college and secondary levels, and it reflects their contributions, both in its scope and its form.

Mathwright Author is protected by copyright and can be purchased from James White by writing him at the Library. The Player may be downloaded and freely copied and distributed. You may also contact James White directly at mathwrig@gte.net

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