Notebook for Introduction to Series from Wolfram Screencast

[Ruben_Garcia]

Dear forum members,
I just got a license to use Mathematica in the Classroom and I'm very excited about the opportunity to bring math topics alive to students using the software.
One of the topics that I'm planning to teach using Mathematica is basic arithmetic and geometric series and after watching one of the screencasts available in Wolfram's website about a notebook lesson (http://www.wolfram.com/broadcast/screen ... ooklesson/), I realized that the materials presented there would be perfect for what I have in mind.
Does anybody know where to find the notebook shown there or a similar one?
Many thanks in advance,
Ruben

[Kathy_Bautista]

Hi Ruben,

I've been in contact with Abby Brown, the author of this notebook. She is on vacation this week but when she returns she will try to locate the Introduction to Series notebook and pass it along.

Below are a few Demonstrations that you may also find useful for your classes:
Sum of a Geometric Series
Visual Computation of Three Geometric Sums
Plot of a Geometric Sequence and its Partial Sums

-Kathy

[Ruben_Garcia]

Dear Kathy,
thank you very much for the update and the links.
I hope Abby can find the notebook as well.
Regards,
Ruben

[Ben_Allgeier]

Hello,

I am new using Mathematica and I too would be interested in Abby's notebook. Besides her code for the content, I want to learn how to modify the way the notebooks look.

For example, how do you get the whole notebook to be that color, how do you get things like: the title to be in white with purple background, some of the section fonts are purple and some are black, the sections can be open and closed from clicking the little triangles, and so on.

In general, what is the best way for typing math for the lectures. For example, do you use a text cell and hit control + 9 to start an inline math mode? Where she has the sequence notation {a_n} they look bigger than the surrounding text. What is a convenient way to make all such math text the same and bigger like that?

Thanks,
Ben

[Kathy_Bautista]

@Ruben and Ben, I just heard back from Abby Brown, and she forwarded me a link to a page that lists all of the Mathematica notebooks that correspond to the screencasts she recorded:
http://teachers.sduhsd.k12.ca.us/abrown ... ebooks.htm

The one you're looking for is labeled "Notebook Lesson".

@Ben, there are several predetermined stylesheets that you can choose from to change the style of your notebook. These can be accessed under Format > Stylesheet. You can edit the style definitions for the current notebook under Format > Edit Stylesheet. Simply select the type of cell style you want to modify under "Choose a style", then use the various font face/size/color options under the Format menu to modify the look of that type of cell. All new cells you create in your notebook will then match that newly-defined style.

The Options Inspector allows you to modify the default styles of all of new notebooks you create, or just the one you are immediately working on. For example, under Formatting Options > Font Options > Background, you can change the background color of the entire notebook.

-Kathy

[Michael_Morrison]

In general, what is the best way for typing math for the lectures. For example, do you use a text cell and hit control + 9 to start an inline math mode? Where she has the sequence notation {a_n} they look bigger than the surrounding text. What is a convenient way to make all such math text the same and bigger like that?

Ben, there are a couple of different approaches you could take. If you start a text cell and then create an inline math cell, the size of the typeset math will be governed by the default setting for font size for text cells in your notebook (along with some other internal settings). If you want to make your math typesetting bigger, you can highlight the typeset portion and change the font size. However, that could get arduous if you have lots of typesetting that you need to enlarge. On the other hand, you could change the setting for text in your document's stylesheet to be larger by default, but this will have the effect of increasing the size of all text, not just typeset expressions, so that won't help if the goal is to make the mathematics stand out (in terms of size) from surrounding text.

I think the best option is to create a new cell style in your notebook that has a large default font size, and then use that cell style when creating typeset mathematics for your lectures. You can use this cell style for both cells that only consist of typeset mathematics (by creating or converting a cell to that new style), or for inline math as well (simply create your inline math, highlight it, and then choose Format > Style > new cell style to have that formatting be applied). Then, if you should want to make changes (a different size, color, typeface, font, etc.) in the future, you can simply edit the cell style definition in the stylesheet and those changes will immediately populate throughout your notebook. I've uploaded a notebook, BigMathCellExample.nb, that has an example of a cell style you can use, and you can download it here:
http://members.wolfram.com/mmorrison/FacultyProgram.html

Let me know if that helps!

Thanks,
Michael

[Ruben_Garcia]

Dear Kathy and Michael,
thank you very much for the postings. I have successfully downloaded the notebooks.
Regards,
Ruben