gja 0.2

Gauss-Jordan assistant

Gauss-Jordan Assistant (gja)

Enabling live demonstration of the Gauss-Jordan algorithm in a terminal/console.

Note: this is a very early version.

Description

The idea of this project is to enable live demonstration of using the Gauss-Jordan algorithm to solve systems of linear equations, using a simple console. This project is developed on Windows but should work using other operating systems.

Why?

I teach an introductory course in Linear Algebra to non-math majors using videoconference. As I teach remotely, I share the content of my screen. Many of the examples require, at one stage or another, that Gaussian elimination on a matrix be performed.

My hand-writing (either using a mouse or a tablet) on a computer screen is absolutely atrocious. In my experience, using slides with all the content written up in advance (which is what I have mostly done until now) is not a good way to maintain student engagement.

As a result, I have developed this tool which allows me to do live computations on my screen in a legible way. Using this tool, I can ask students to guide me in finding a solution to any numerical problem that we are looking at, just as easily as I could do it in a traditional classroom with a blackboard.

Bonus (to come)

It will be possible to save the result of all the steps using LaTeX format, for easy inclusion (without typos!) in any LaTeX document.

Requirements

• Python 3.8+
• Rich (https://pypi.org/project/rich/). Rich is a fantastic project.

To work properly on Windows (which is what I use), you need the following:

• Windows Terminal (https://github.com/Microsoft/Terminal), which you can get from the Microsoft Store.