Sunday 7 April 2013

Desmos Delights

This is NOT a comprehensive review, but merely a little expression of delight about discovering handy applications for Desmos. I must confess, whilst I know people have been talking and tweeting about desmos for a while, I just haven't made time to get around to looking at it. I still haven't had much time! For me I look for a few things in new stuff. First of all I want somebody to quickly outline potential!
Secondly I want to know what it can do that I couldn't do before and
Thirdly, how easily can I get started!

Well, I got instant delight from the 'instant slider' effect. Whilst it is certainly true that knowing how to tie sliders to constants in Geogebra is an inherent part of understanding both the maths and the software, there are times when the 'instant' slider is just what you want! This example is exactly what I used in class just the other day for exploring the impact of different variables on the shape of an exponential function. Almost no explanation required for students to be doing the same and making lots of great discoveries. I have a feeling that this maybe the first of many 'desmos delight' to come!
I was hoping to be able to embed an interactive graph i this blog post. I can see from some quick research that this is possible, but it didn't happen quick enough this time! That will be a delight saved for another time!

4 comments:

  1. You can produce interactive graphs like that with Mathematica, as well. See the demos at http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/search.html?query=exponential%20function
    You need to download the free CDF play er at http://www.wolfram.com/cdf-player/

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  2. Thanks Charles - whilst I know Mathematica to be very capable I think I was just enjoying the sheer simplicity of Desmos here!

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  3. Hi Jim,
    There are certainly some cute simple features to it and I like the way that graphs can be shared. When I use sliders to control constants on graphs like the example that you have given I always like to have the equation displayed with the current values of the parameters showing. I always get geogebra graphs to show them. Do you know if this is possible with desmos?

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  4. Dont know - good question and that is a nice feature! The people at desmos do respond to questions on twitter https://twitter.com/Desmos SInec writing this post they have already got back to me to say that embedded interactivity is on the cards.

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