Article: Strength in numbers

The biggest user of Mathcad in the world, rated by the number of licences in use, is the UK’s Open University. TCM talked to the OU to find out how and why they use Mathcad so extensively.

One of the strengths of Mathcad has always been its clear and simple presentation - working directly on the live document interface and integrating text, equations, functions and graphs. So perhaps it is no surprise that as well as being an essential professional tool for engineers and mathematicians, it has proved to have a powerful role in educating the technical computer users of tomorrow. Not only is the Open University Britain’s biggest place of tertiary education, it is also the largest Mathcad licensee - not just in the UK but world wide. Just last year, the Open University purchased another 28,000 licences to cover the extensive use of the software by its students.

The two foundation level courses, in Mathematics, which host around 5000 students each year, have been working with Mathcad 5. The University is planning to upgrade this, possibly to Mathcad 2001i.
The Foundation course ‘Using Mathematics’ introduces the use of computer software via Mathcad, and explores mathematical modelling in the natural and designed world, population models, and continuous models including calculus. As the course description explains, “the software greatly increases the speed and accuracy with which mathematical manipulations can be performed, and so enhances your ability to apply mathematical techniques to the investigation and solution of practical problems.”

The more advanced level 2 course, ‘Mathematical Methods, Models and Modelling’, teaches the use of mathematics in solving real problems and in visualising the solutions. It covers, using mathematical models to represent aspects of the real world, how mathematical models are constructed, and the methods useful in working with such models. These methods include differential equations, linear algebra and advanced calculus. Many are implemented in Mathcad Pro 7 worksheets, so that the computer is used to solve more difficult problems and to investigate case studies.

The Level Three course, Optimisation, looks specifically at the techniques used to represent real-life problems as mathematical models to be solved by computer. Advanced techniques for solving linear programming and non-linear optimisation problems are discussed, with Mathcad 2001 worksheets to enable students to assess their strengths and weaknesses. One of the innovative features of these worksheets is the ability to output details of the intermediate calculations to a separate window so that these calculations can be examined.

Mathcad is an integral part of all these courses. Course worksheets lead the participants through exercises using Mathcad to test out various algorithms.

For many students, their experience of Mathcad provides a valuable new skill, which they can take into their professional life. Future engineers, scientists and academics receive their basic training at the Open University in an easy to use software environment which will continue to be a powerful tool for exploring and solving complex technical challenges throughout their careers.

Why did the OU choose Mathcad?
On the foundation courses, students are not assumed to have had any previous computer experience. It is therefore essential that Mathcad is easy to use. Mathcad is unique in that the mathe-matics that you see on the screen are very similar to the mathematics that you see in textbooks, complete with graphics and text. Students are able to start solving problems very quickly after learning a few basic rules.

How is it integrated into the course work?
The course materials that students study include computing activities where students use specially designed worksheets to solve problems, do extensive calculations, draw graphs, plot contours and so on. In the level 2 course ‘Mathematical Methods, Models and Modelling’, all the computing activities can be launched from the Course Map so that they don’t have to spend time looking for a particular Mathcad worksheet.