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Re: [Phys-l] Grapher on macintosh



Sorry, it was me who made a typing error. Unfortunately, I do not know what it was; the Grapher file was not saved. Now all is as you describe. The Grapher works fine for me so far. But learning by trial and error is not very efficient. That is why I am looking for a good tutorial. Offering an application without offering a good tutorial is only 50% of work.

Ludwik

On Feb 22, 2008, at 11:45 PM, Steve Highland wrote:

I was showing that the curve plotted by Grapher was in very
good agreement with the function posted by Steven. I suspect there was
a typing error in his right side expression. The only place the x axis
is intercepted is at the origin. The values of y increase
monotonically for all values of x.

There was no typo -- the function I was trying to plot was indeed

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

Which has a maximum of y=18 at x=14 and then goes back to zero at x=28.

My goof was not realizing Grapher had chosen non-traditional minor tick
units. Now I see that "4 tick marks per major tick" is referring to just
the marks themselves rather than the number of subdivisions between major
ticks. That's what messed me up -- I put "5" in the box and didn't see that
it gave me six subdivisions.

Now I have it plotted correctly *and* looking right, too.

Steve

On Feb 22, 2008, at 3:26 PM, Steve Highland wrote:

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.

I do not know why my file, attached to two messages, was not part of
what I received. Is this because this file was extracted from Grapher
or is it because I am having a problem with sending attachments. As a
test let me attach a file that has nothing to do with Grapher. See
below.

The attached rtf file should appear below this line





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/




_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l


_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l

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/