THE USE OF MATHEMATICAL SOFTWARE IN MATHS SUBJECTS FOR ENGINEERING STUDIES

Mathematical subjects in engineering studies have always had to deal with the dilemma between the knowledge by itself or the application of the results to problem solving. The advent of new technologies has come into the debate with the question of allowing the students the use of mathematical software for advanced computations. It is often said that the use of mathematical software limits their need to learn the mathematics involved in the exercises the solve.

In this presentation we address both our experiences and our opinion on this topic, which summarizes in the following: computers have come to free engineers from long, tedious and, above all, source of errors, computations which are, on the other hand, straightforward. Therefore, students must learn to use these tools, and we, teachers, must show them the need for them. To this end, real problems, from real world, can be presented to students where the use of a computer is unavoidable to get to a solution. We argue that, far from reducing the mathematical knowledge, this approach focus on the mathematical concept instead of on the algorithm for solving it, which leads to a better understanding. We show some practical examples of this approach for subjects as calculus, linear algebra or statistics. To this end, special emphasis is put on free software.