[Review of FindAns. Mathematics Teacher, December 1999: 82. The published version may be slightly edited from this submitted version.]

FindAns is a tool to allow some numerical and graphical algebra and less calculus. No symbolic calculation is permitted. The audience is advertised to be students of mathematics and scientists of all kinds. FindAns is not flexible enough for ongoing scientific work, and it benefits students mostly for a few straightforward problems with limited range. FindAns does not permit problems requiring several steps of different kinds. Determinants are an example throughout this review, but the ideas below apply to all aspects of FindAns.

The result of one calculation is not available to another part of the tool. A determinant can be calculated, but the result cannot be used in an area calculation as the next step. In fact the result cannot be pasted elsewhere at all. Usually graphs are treated as objects that can be pasted elsewhere, but the conic graphs are exceptions.

The individual tools are unintuitively grouped. If you begin the program to calculate a determinant, you must first select a coordinate system that is irrelevant to the problem. When you finally find the general screen that allows calculating determinants, you may be at either of two copies of the screen, so you do not know whether to move right or left to get to another screen.

Artificial distinctions are made between things that are really the same. One can calculate 2H2 determinants using FindAns only by using nHn determinants and specifying n as 2, but one may calculate 3H3 determinants directly from the menu. One cannot graph a system of two equations in two unknowns until FindAns solves them numerically, even though a teacher might want to graph first so as to teach estimation skills. A system of parallel lines cannot be graphed. Graphing a single linear equation and graphing two linear equations require rigidly different templates. One cannot build off the first to go on to do the second.

The calculations are all forward calculations. There are no “what if” calculations that allow you to specify all but one part of a problem and have the software work backwards. For example, FindAns calculates determinants but does not allow the calculation of a missing entry in a determinant whose value is specified. FindAns calculates triangle areas given sides and angles, but not sides given sides, angles, and area. It does nicely find two solutions for the ambiguous SSA triangle case, though.

Derive from SoftWarehouse or Mathcad from Mathsoft are much more flexible about algebra. Geometer's Sketchpad from Key Curriculum Press or Cabri Geometry II from Texas Instruments are much more flexible about geometry. Summer training courses and extensive Internet web support with templates for special teaching needs are available for all four of those products. Granted, these are all more complicated than FindAns, but the limitations of FindAns are frustrating. FindAns automates very rigid templates of operations.

As a computer program, FindAns leaves much to be desired. It has no uninstall program, even though files are installed to many places on your disk. Garbage collection is not automatic, so every so often you are prompted to compact your workspace, frequently even on a computer with four times the recommended RAM. Error messages are very unintuitive. For example, attempting to graph parallel lines gives the error “Not a number -1.IND”.

I cannot recommend this program.

—Gene B. Chase, Messiah College, Grantham, PA 17027