And they find another one...

Well, we've been graphing now pretty successfully.... when we get to this simple little example:
d = 230t
d = 200t+170.
Plot the first, drag the second on to the grid, no problem. Then, we try to zoom/translate to approximate the intersection's location.
Well, Maple decides that we aren't going to get it. When you don't use x/y as your independent/dependent variables, then even when you specify an implicit plot of t/d, as soon as you do any manipulation Maple reverts the graph to d/t. In fact, regardless of your initial setting of independent/dependent variables as soon as you use the zoom or translate tool Maple resets the variables in alphabetical order.
So... I was warned through research that using a CAS system would require better understanding of mathematical expressions and their equality. I just didn't expect to have to deal with Maple's idiosyncracies (or is it errors?). In the future, I guess my variables will be in the correct order... I wonder if the students will notice?

2nd foray

Having done graphing with Maple the other day, we worked a little bit with solving systems of equations by substitution. One of the students mentioned that instead of assigning names by typing "L1:=y=3x+2" you could avoid the first equal sign and just use a colon.
Well, that was okay for graphing, since you just right-clicked and chose plot. However, it doesn't work because the assignment to L1 isn't made, so when you tried to do a substitution into L1, it didn't exist.
Some of the students in the 2nd section had a challenge with the 2nd line they dropped on to the graph only had domain -10 to 10... wasn't sure why that was happening.
The second section does algebra on Friday ... and we'll do more algebra with it next week!