Re: [Fhsst-maths] New to FHSST

[Sam Halliday]

On 25 Mar 2005, at 16:34, greg wrote:
> I look forward to contributing. Can anyone suggest a starting point? 
> I'm happy
> to begin with a finance section, if it hasn't been done.

hi greg!

you are certainly welcome to help out. at the moment, Bianca said she 
would write the finance chapter... but i haven't heard anything in 
ages. i'll ping her about it and get back to you, perhaps you could 
have the whole thing to yourself! :-)

i'll get back to you soon, but if you do get landed with it you must 
aim to fulfil the following syllabus constraints:

- use simple and compound interest for relevant problems (hire purchase 
and
  inflation)
- effective and nominal interest
- understand fluctuating foreign exchange rates and their effect on 
local
  prices, travelling prices, imports and exports
- solve straight line (simple) depreciation and depreciation on a 
reducing
  budget (compound depreciation)
- (grade 12) apply geometric series to solve problems (future values of
  annuities, bond repayments, sinking fund contributions including the
  difference in time taken to pay when the monthly payment is changed)
- (grade 12) critically analyse investment and loan options and make
  informed decisions to the best options (pyramid and micro lenders 
schemes)

that syllabus is a bit old.

in the meantime... please read the intro document here:
  http://fommil.homeunix.org/~samuel/fhsst/
and as preparation, download and read the latest Maths syllabus linked 
to from that page. it is quite big and is without a doubt a farce, so 
skip through till you find finance.

as for a Linux GUI for LaTeX... i suppose you mean a WYSIWYG (what you 
see is what you get) editor. personally, i hate them... but you could 
try TeXMacs or LyX (google is your friend). the majority of us use 
Emacs with an adon package called AUCTeX. its not a WYSIWYG as you are 
editing the raw LaTeX, but with the addition of another package called 
preview-latex you can see the equations as they will look on paper 
inline with your files. although you are editing the raw LaTeX file, 
viewing the DVI output is a mere C-c C-c away :-)

cheers,
Sam
--
Free High School Science Texts
  http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst/
Sam's Homepages
  https://fommil.homeunix.org/~samuel/
  http://www.ma.hw.ac.uk/~samuel/

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