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Beautiful Free Math – Desmos Animated Graphing Calculator (desmos.com)
95 points by sonicrocketman 9 hours ago | hide | past | favorite | 15 comments





I used Desmos quite a bit as an instructional tool for high school math. They are funded through relationships with several companies, but most notably the standardized testing industry, which uses it with their online tests.

Over ten years before Desmos launched, there began an open source project called Geogebra (https://www.geogebra.org/). Geogebra remains open source to this day and offers a similar suite of applications and calculators, both online and in app form.

Over the years I have also used Geogebra as an instructional tool in both my math and physics classrooms, producing dozens of apps, simulators, and gizmos: https://www.geogebra.org/u/mrdathhs

Geogebra excels at creating mathematical simulations. One of my favorites was this real-time satellite orbit calculator: https://www.geogebra.org/m/UEynuRnG


I really wish I could get a dedicated handheld graphing calculator that hasn't had most of the functionality removed due to standardized testing. We live in an age of miracles but having a decent solver on a dedicated device is apparently commercially impossible because it couldn't be sold to students.

I'm just a dude in my shop that occasionally would like to integrate a thing or two without getting coolant on my phone.


There is DM42 hardware[1] and the DB48X/C47 firmwares for it. I feel that they are very much pushing the boundary on what makes sense on a formfactor like that.

For something more powerful, you'd probably want something more in the "cyberdeck" direction, with some 3d printing and cheap ARM linux boards it's relatively easy to build portable distraction-free compute device.

I adore this Micro Journal device[2]. Although it's intended for writing, it's not too difficult to imagine it running some suitable calculator software. The keyboard could be easily adapted to HP Voyager (15c etc) style layout.

[1] https://www.swissmicros.com/product/model-dm42n

[2] https://liliputing.com/micro-journal-rev-2-revamp-is-a-compa...


HP Prime G2 can certainly graph things, evaluate integrals, solve systems of equations etc not sure how hard you’re looking because all the manufacturers have models like that. They have an exam mode which nerfs the calculator for tests.

Have you looked at some of the alternative firmwares for older Numworks models?

For a similar project in a similar space (but with both a free android emulator, and the option for a dedicated hardware device), see [0]. I actually use it as my preferred calculator on my phone.

All the best,

[0] https://www.numworks.com/


I posted on Mastodon today about how helpful tools like this are for building mathematical intuition. Animations are no substitute, but they can also do what lecture never could.

Mastodon post: https://mastodon.social/@sonicrocketman/113884920858897541


A wonderful example of this is:

The Continuity of Splines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvPPXbo87ds

and

The Beauty of Bézier Curves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVwxzDHniEw

by Freya Holmér https://www.youtube.com/@acegikmo

While not animated, I find:

_Euclid's Elements_ (Joyce's Java Version) very helpful https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm...

Since my current project has pretty much devolved to putting a UI on various trigonometric functions and allowing the user to program them, I'd be very glad of other resources in this space (currently working through Hilbert's _Geometry and the Imagination_ and the book which matches https://projectivegeometricalgebra.org/ and just finished the _Make:Geometry/Trigonometry/Calculus_ series, and have had recommended Curves and Surfaces for CAGD: A Practical Guide by Gerald Farin)


Freya Holmér is great.

To add on: Grant Sanderson's 3Blue1Brown youtube channel might be the best conceptual math presentation in history, the animations are incredible.


Awesome. I love desmos. I just used it yesterday for a Wave mathematics class I taught for a homeschool group. I also wrote a math graphing program that helps make math beautiful called [Truthy Graph](https://truthygraph.github.io/). It came from a thought: most graphing programs only graph were both sides of the equation are exactly equal, but what would it look like to see also where they are nearly equal (in other words, the error gradient)?

I'm not much of a math aficionado, but I tip my hat to the creator of Desmos. Has been around and free for quite awhile now.

We are in kind of similar category but broader data literacy space and making data analysis more accessible and interactive. give it a try at https://tuvalabs.com

you can plot functions on top of your visualizations, or take samples etc.




I'm learning about digital signal processing and I use Desmos all the time as a scratchpad to plot the response of functions.



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