Technical Notes and Pedagogy
Technical Notes:
- Maple V release 4 is required to run eshow.
- To modify the code for release 3, the "arrow"
commands can be replaced with line segments.
- Animations can be generated more quickly
by reducing the number of frames.
- The display(seq(display...)) structure of the
procedure preserves color assignments in the animation.
(The animate command loses the color information.)
Pedagogy:
Besides the obvious uses of graphically
identifying eigenvectors and approximating
eigenvalues, eshow can be used for a variety
of linear algebra projects. For example...
- Find numerical estimates for the basis elements of the nullspace of a matrix A.
- How do the animations for invertible and singular matrices differ?
-
Find three matrices, one with two distinct real eigenvalues, one with one repeated real eigenvalue, and one with no real eigenvalues; describe the displays of these matrices.
- Compare the animations for rotation matrices with those of other non-singular matrices.
- Describe the range space shown by a singular matrix.