Graphing Applications (1 Viewer)

Jord_o

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Does anyone know what program NESA, or even different schools across NSW use to make their digital graphs?

They're all very clean and elegant - nothing like what word has to offer.

Thanks!
 

brent012

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LaTeX can be a bit of a pain for graphing and graphics, but definitely many maths textbooks are typeset using it.

In uni, depending on the course you take, you might get exposure to some mathematical software package with graphing ability. For example, Matlab or its open source equivalent Octave, Wolfram Mathematica, R or Python+Numpy+Matplotlib.
 

Jord_o

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LaTeX can be a bit of a pain for graphing and graphics, but definitely many maths textbooks are typeset using it.

In uni, depending on the course you take, you might get exposure to some mathematical software package with graphing ability. For example, Matlab or its open source equivalent Octave, Wolfram Mathematica, R or Python+Numpy+Matplotlib.
Thanks for these suggestions. How would I go about using Latex to graph? Would I have to code or is there a program that has Latex integrated within it that I can use with greater ease?
 

CM_Tutor

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You can download TeX to use, it is open source, but it takes a bit to get the hang of using it for graphics, and some types of diagrams are much easier to draw than others.
 

brent012

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Thanks for these suggestions. How would I go about using Latex to graph? Would I have to code or is there a program that has Latex integrated within it that I can use with greater ease?
LaTeX is really just for typesetting, you'd use TikZ or something like pgfplots to make a graph, but it would be pretty awful to actually experiment with unless you already knew exactly what you needed to graph. While you can download it, it can be annoying to setup, so check out Overleaf if you want to get started with LaTeX.

Using Matlab/Octave or Mathematica would have a better user experience, maybe check out whatever you can get access to for free as a student and you might need to use in the first year of uni.

If you've already got coding experience or want to get more into something like CS or data analytics, Python+Numpy+Matplotlib are pretty good too - maybe with a Jupyter notebook.

Dan's suggestion of Geogebra is good too, and is probably more accessible than anything i've mentioned. Both in terms of ease to get/install and also to use, as it's more designed for teaching and use in schools.
 

quickoats

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Your school may be using GeoGebra (an easy to use application). I believe NESA uses LaTeX and TikZ to write its exams (using the stix font).

For high school graphing purposes, I’d recommend geogebra or Desmos as they are easy to use and have options that make the graphs more dynamic.
 

Jord_o

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Ahh I've been searching for the font NESA uses for ages.

Thanks for your help :)
 

Jord_o

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LaTeX is really just for typesetting, you'd use TikZ or something like pgfplots to make a graph, but it would be pretty awful to actually experiment with unless you already knew exactly what you needed to graph. While you can download it, it can be annoying to setup, so check out Overleaf if you want to get started with LaTeX.

Using Matlab/Octave or Mathematica would have a better user experience, maybe check out whatever you can get access to for free as a student and you might need to use in the first year of uni.

If you've already got coding experience or want to get more into something like CS or data analytics, Python+Numpy+Matplotlib are pretty good too - maybe with a Jupyter notebook.

Dan's suggestion of Geogebra is good too, and is probably more accessible than anything i've mentioned. Both in terms of ease to get/install and also to use, as it's more designed for teaching and use in schools.
Thanks for your help. I was able to follow a few tutorials and make this!
 

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brent012

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Thanks for your help. I was able to follow a few tutorials and make this!
Nice! Looks like LaTeX, did you use Overleaf?

If you need to use it for an assignment of some sort, i'd recommend trying to write the whole thing in LaTeX rather than just copying in your diagram too. Good practice for uni, most students won't touch LaTeX at all until their capstone/thesis or even postgrad - but there's many pros to using it.
 

quickoats

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Ahh I've been searching for the font NESA uses for ages.

Thanks for your help :)
They don't use the classic Latex Computer Modern font, they use Times New Roman (and its latex math version StiX)
 

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