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Re: [Phys-l] Grapher on macintosh



I spent some hours one day trying to get Grapher to work for me last year.
It was painful. Perhaps I can dig up some knowledge for you (but don't hold
your breath).

One very disturbing thing about Grapher is that I've found it does not
accurately plot functions relative to the grid marks! I tried to plot a
piecewise continuous function and the pieces did not match up!

Even worse, just try to plot this:

Y = -(9/98)(x^2 -28x)

This came out of a football kick problem I was trying to help out with on
Yahoo Answers. It should have a maximum of y = 18 at x = 14 and it should
cross the x-axis at x=28.

Whoa -- I was about to complain that the plot doesn't hit the grid marks,
but now I (finally!) see that there are SIX subdivisions for every FIVE
units on my plot. Egad! How in the world does something like that come up
automatically? I suffered greatly a few months ago over this but didn't see
it till now. Yikes.

Steve Highland
Duluth MN


A free application, called GRAPHER, has been available to Mac users
since the OS 10.4 was introduced, about 3 years ago. I am learning how
to use this application on my new iMac (under OS 10-5.2). Unable to
find a good tutorial (by googling) I am experimenting by trial and
error. That is not the best way to learn things. Who else is using
Grapher? What do you think about it? Please share the URL of a good
tutorial, if you know it.

Ludwik Kowalski, a retired physisist
5 Horizon Road, apt.2702, Fort Lee, NJ, 07024, USA
Also an amateur journalist at http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/




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