I have taught calculus at the college level for a few years and I have a few thoughts.... Having taught off of matlab, maple, and mathematica I can tell you that NONE of them is instructive for beginning students. If you want to know the biggest problem that my students have, it is not calculus, statistics, or physics. They tend to understand the 'ideas' behind what they are doing. The area that they truly need to work is basic algebra and problem solving skills. Learning what a derivative is and the basics of how to find it are not difficult. Most of the students who fail, fail because they lack the skills to take a concept and apply it properly. Its like knowing syntax for a programming language but not having any idea how to write an algoritm that actually accomplishs a goal. Without these skills, the best software isn't going to help. That being said, understanding is enhanced much more with a symbolic language of which there have been a few good suggestions.
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I have taught calculus at the college level for a few years and I have a few thoughts....
Having taught off of matlab, maple, and mathematica I can tell you that NONE of them is instructive for beginning students. If you want to know the biggest problem that my students have, it is not calculus, statistics, or physics. They tend to understand the 'ideas' behind what they are doing. The area that they truly need to work is basic algebra and problem solving skills. Learning what a derivative is and the basics of how to find it are not difficult. Most of the students who fail, fail because they lack the skills to take a concept and apply it properly. Its like knowing syntax for a programming language but not having any idea how to write an algoritm that actually accomplishs a goal. Without these skills, the best software isn't going to help. That being said, understanding is enhanced much more with a symbolic language of which there have been a few good suggestions.