Differential Equations

Spring 2021

Instr:	Dr. Roger Griffiths
Office:	Old Main 305
Phone:	824-2123
Email:	rgriffiths@mercyhurst.edu
Text:	Fundamentals of Differential Equations (8th Edition) , by Nagle, Saff, Snider

Notes (Spring 2024):

My current Schedule

Fall 2015

ACTION ITEMS:

Bad Habits You Must Eliminate from Your Daily Routine

You are the sum of your habits. When you allow bad habits to take over, they dramatically impede your path to success. The challenge is bad habits are insidious, creeping up on you slowly until you don’t even notice the damage they’re causing.
READ MORE > > > (by Dr. Travis Bradberry)

Quit Saying 'I'm Just Not a Math Person'

It started with a fairly simple problem. The class of elementary education majors were looking at energy and efficiency. This course is specifically designed to help these students get a basic understanding of the nature of science > > > READ MORE > > > (Quit Saying 'I'm Just Not a Math Person')

Free software is simply software that respects our freedom — our freedom to learn and understand the software we are using. Free software is designed to free the user from restrictions put in place by proprietary software, and so using free software lets you join a global community of people who are making the political and ethical assertion of our rights to learn and to share what we learn with others.

What is all this "open-source"/"Free software"?

Education: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." READ ON
Schools have a social mission: to teach students to be citizens of a strong, capable, independent, cooperating and free society. Read more > > > Why Schools Should Exclusively Use Free Software
Free software is a matter of liberty, not price The Free Software Foundation (FSF) OR
The Free Software Definition GNU.org- The Free Software Definition

Software - Open Source

(Free Software generally under the terms of the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License)

- An introduction to Linux from Opensource.com
- LibreOffice is the free power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute (and much better than that expensive virus you are probably currently using).
- GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
The R Project for Statistical Computing - R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.
XPPAUT a tool for numerically solving differential, difference, or delay equations
Maxima - a sophisticated computer algebra system
Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations (similar to Matlab).
Iode - free, but you will need Octave (see link below) or Matlab to use (phase plane utility).
SAGE: Open Source Mathematics Software - Creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica, and Matlab

Linux/GNOME users:

The problems with GNOME 3 are not as bad everyone is saying. Sure GNOME 3 itself is ...hmmm, well as Linux daddy Linus Torvalds says "GNOME 3 is an unholy mess", but the Xfce graphical desktop environment is a decent replacement for GNOME 2, so problem largely solved.

Patent Absurdity

A documentary film "Patent Absurdity" is set to expose how the judicial activism that led to the patenting of software has broken the US patent system's promise of promoting the progress of science and useful arts. This has ramifications for students, in the harm being done to software developers and the wider economy.