General purpose tools are used to gain access to a wide range of problem-solving situations and mathematical content. These tools require strategies and skills highly applicable or transferable to other technology tools being used simultaneously or in the future.
Algebra & Functions:
Gen_Alg_CAS The Computer Algebra System (CAS) tool manipulates symbolic expressions, equations and inequalities; solves in exact and decimal forms; produces graphs and tables; expands and factors polynomials; explores parameters used in functions; slices implicitly-defined surfaces; and computes with matrices.
Gen_Alg_Spreadsheet The Spreadsheet tool displays and computes data stored in cells of a table; relates rows and columns by formulas; explores problems and models numerically including linear programming and “what-if” scenarios; and produces graphs for models not easily represented by algebraic models.
Geometry & Trigonometry:
Gen_Geo_Synthetic The Interactive Geometry tool is a interactive geometry platform that constructs, measures, manipulates, transforms (translations, reflections, rotations, dilations) and animates geometric figures including lines, circles, angles, perpendiculars, bisectors, tangents and vectors; offers synthetic and coordinate representations of geometric objects and transformations supporting the discovery of geometric relationships and structures; supports analytic geometry using matrices; and contains a simple command-oriented programming language that supports the construction of algorithms.
Statistics & Probability
Gen_Stat_DataAnalysis The Data Analysis tool produces graphs and analysis of univariate and bivariate (categorical and quantitative) data including fitting algebraic models by-hand or “best-fit”; calculates descriptive statistics; performs chi-square tests for two-way tables; and contains pre-loaded data sets that have been carefully selected to highlight centrals ideas of statistics.
Gen_Stat_Simulation The Simulation tool models probabilistic situations involving discrete and continuous outcomes; constructs simple and complex events with and without replacement; displays tabular and graphical results; and produces samples of varying size from distributions with an underlying probability model.
http://www.nctm.org/standards/content.aspx?id=32706
Archived Story: This article is part of our newsletter archives. It has
been preserved for reference, but the information may no longer be current.