I hope this webpage alerts you to some of the better mathematics software you can get, most of which is free or very inexpensive.

• Mathematics typesetting software
  • TeX and LaTeX. These packages make typesetting math very fast and easy. TeX is the base language, and was developed by Donald Knuth of Stanford. LaTeX is a set of macros for TeX, which make it much easier to use. TeX/LaTeX is the lingua franca of math and science. You'll need to learn it eventually. The software is FREE! (The link above is to MiKTeX, which is a TeX system for Windows; I believe TeX comes standard with Linux.)
  • MathType. A more advanced version of the equation editor that comes with Microsoft Word. Less of a learning curve, but slower to use than LaTeX/TeX. It's $129.
• Geometry software
  • Geometer's Sketchpad. If you took geometry and didn't use Geometer's Sketchpad, you really should try it. It's just amazing, once you realize what it allows you to do. It's $39.95 for the student version, less (I believe) if your school has a site license.
  • Simulator of Euclidean Geometry. Modeled after Sketchpad, SEG does most of what Sketchpad does, and is FREE. The main difference between it and Sketchpad is that there are no shortcuts for making lines, rays, segments, and circles: you have to use your right mouse button to drop points, and select two points to create a line, ray, segment, or circle. (Also, there's no documentation: just realize that you have to multiple-select enough data to allow the program to understand what you want. If you want an arc, you need to select three points; if you want a parallel line, you have to select a line and a point.)
  • KDE Simulator of Euclidean Geometry. The author of SEG rewrote his software for Linux (K Desktop Environemnt). If you use Linux, try KSEG. It's also FREE.
  • WinGeom. A different Windows geometry package. It's quite different from Sketchpad, so I couldn't bring myself to learn it, but apparently some people really like it. It's by a teacher at Phillips Exeter, and is also FREE.
• Graphing software
  • DPGraph. I haven't really scratched the surface of this graphing package, but I like that you can enter a function like "x^2+4*x=y^3+3*y^2+y" and see a graph, without having to solve for y. It costs $10.
  • (If you have a suggestion for good graphing software, let me know and I'll add it.)
• Graph paper software
  • Graph Paper Printer, version 4.21. This is a really fantastic package for printing graph paper, and it's FREE.
  • Graph Paper Printer, version 5.4.0.1. This is a later version of the freeware package -- now it's shareware and costs $20. (I don't see much in the shareware version that you can't get from the freeware version.)

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