ByPath (vb 6)

Mathematical plotting

Bypath is a mathematical plotter aimed at helping grade 10/11 (secondary 4/5) students understand the role of mathematical functions and how to interpret them.

History

The initial idea came to me as our grad 10 math teacher brought us to the computer lab to introduce to us the graphical aspect of functions. The program we had to use was a dos based application called Picasso created by two college (or maybe university) teachers in Québec. At the time (1999) windows was the norm and a dos based application which required the use of the keyboard seems to me like an awful way of teaching students; much of whom had poor computer knowledge. The program also lacked a lot of the windows environment graphics rich bases, which was a hit to the programs main purpose.

I thus started my own program using visual basic 6, which I poorly named Picasso as well.

In grade 11, it was time for us to choose a topic for our mandatory Science fair project. Along with my partner it seems like ByPath (then Picasso) was the best place to start, knowing that we had a passion for computer related issues. Thus our project was to focus on web page creation and programming (my partner doing the web side of things).

During the few months that followed, ByPath gained a large array of options, such as an MDI environment, the ability to save files, function editing (deletion, hiding, color changing), full screen viewing and various mathematical functions.

Where is it now?

After having earned me a 100$ bursary for l’École Plytechnique de Montreal (one of the best engineering universities in Canada), ByPath is now awaiting its porting to Visual Basic.Net where it is to get a real Mathematical Parser.

Functions in the program

Coming soon!