Weekend Project: Math, Science, and Ubuntu Come Together in Mathbuntu

Mathbuntu brings a nice batch of math and science software, textbooks, and other goodies to Ubuntu and Kubuntu. Let's try it out and see if it makes us smarter.

Mathbuntu can be obtained in three ways. One is to download and run its slick little installation script for existing Ubuntu and Kubuntu systems. This adds all the Mathbuntu bits without having to download the whole distro. It will take a while because it downloads a lot of packages.

You can order a DVD for a few bucks, and there are also complete downloadable .isos. The available versions are K/Ubuntu 11.10 and 12.04, both 32- and 64-bit. The download links on the download page are obscured, which is sad for wget fans, but there is still a way to use wget. I certainly do, because it automatically retries interrupted downloads and supports rate-limiting. It seems that ever so many FOSS projects and distros like to play funny games with download links, so one way to find them is to go ahead and start the download with Firefox. Then the Download Manager will tell you when you right-click on your download, as in figure 1.

Click on Copy Download Link, and then middle-click paste in a terminal. Now you can prepend your favorite wget incantation, like this one that continues interrupted downloads and limits its bandwidth to 100k:

$ wget -c --limit-rate=100k http://www.mathbuntu.org/iso/MathKubuntu12.04-amd64.iso

There is a lot of installation help on Mathbuntu.org, including videos.

The download images are over 2GB. Burn one to a DVD and there's your live DVD and installation disk, and of course you can easily make a bootable USB stick. I installed a Kubuntu image and gave it a whirl.

However you get Mathbuntu, what does it give you? For starters, you get a batch of open source and public domain textbooks, such as the highly-regarded three-volume "History of Modern Mathematics" by David Eugene Smith, "Introduction to Real Analysis" by William Trench, and "Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal Approach" by H. Jerome Keisler.

I have a special fondness for readily-accessible textbooks. Textbooks have traditionally been a bit of a racket; "new" editions often contain only trivial changes, and they're expensive. Textbook publishers are discovering both the good and bad sides of high tech: digital distribution is cheaper, faster, and more flexible, but fences and walls are also tempting. And so students get to have fun adventures with purchasing time-bombed access codes which they cannot re-sell, and which sometimes don't work, and good luck sorting that out. I like books I can just pick up and read without drama, and resell or give away.

There is a fair bit of good science and math software for Linux, and Mathbuntu collects a sizable herd of it, including: 

LaTeX (typesetting)Scilab (MATLAB clone)Maxima algebra systemwxMaxima (graphical Maxima interface)Octave (MATLAB clone)QtOctave (graphical interface for Octave)R (statistical computing)RKWard (graphical interface for R)Sage (mathematics)GeoGebra (geometry and algebra)K3DSurf (3D surface generator)Xfig (vector graphics)XPPAUT (differential equation solver)IFS Tools (create Iterated Function System fractals)KmPlot (mathematical function plotter.)

Mathbuntu also includes links to meaty online educational sites like Khan Academy, MIT Open Courseware, Sage Online, and WolframAlpha, the online answer engine built on Mathematica.

Installation was uneventful, and no, I am not nostalgic for the olden days when installing Linux required determination and iron geek muscles. Installing most any Linux has been a non-dramatic event for many years now, and I like it that way. Mathbuntu expands to about 6GB, and that includes the customary Linux richness of apps like LibreOffice, GIMP, various email, Web, messaging, multimedia, and system utilities. (I shall refrain from making my customary comparison to our big proprietary commercial friend who can barely cram an operating system into 15GB, let alone applications.)

The bootloader has useful customizations as Figure 2 shows: boot to a serial console and the Plop boot manager, which lets you boot from USB media even on older systems that don't support it.

The menu organization is a little confusing for me, with overlapping entries in multiple categories like Development, Science, and Math. I'd like to see a Mathbuntu category with all the special Mathbuntu apps in one place, a nice one-stop shop for perusing all the goodies and trying them out.

Mathbuntu is maintained by Dr. Leon Brin, who is a mathematician and professor. He is also the author of IFS Tools, and contributes to Maxima. Dr. Brin said in a FLOSS For Science interview that he is open to more contributors working on Mathbuntu. He wants a better website with more interaction with users and contributors, a more flexible installer that lets users tailor the installation, and more documentation and more textbooks. (Figure 3 shows the Mathbuntu KDE desktop.)

I've long felt that one of Ubuntu's strongest features is the common repositories that serve all Ubuntu flavors: Kubuntu, Ubuntu Server, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and all the myriad independent offshoots. This means that any single Ubuntu installation can easily morph into any variant by simply installing a few packages, rather than having to support a completely new installation. This also makes it easy to roll out specialty variations like Mathbuntu without introducing incompatibilities. Mathbuntu is useful for the math and science nerd who already knows what software they want, and especially useful for introducing Linux users to some of the great math and science apps in Linux.

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Project Topics for Computer Science Students

One amazing thing about final year projects is that it can boost or mar your overall CGPA. So it's best to endeavor to make your project earn you nothing less than a B. This thread is dedicated to providing tips to assist undergraduates offering the course of computer science in any of our higher institutions of learning.
Getting a Project Topic:
Obviously, this is the first thing that one should think of. But the problem is how to go about it. Many students will search the web, libraries or other sources looking for topics that they could use. Sadly, after a topic might have been found, many students fail to fully understand the purpose for which the project was intended for. They only get to discover this during their project defense when the examining Project Co-coordinator points out this fact to them, but by then, its too late for excuses. The Marks are awarded... and its never an Alpha.
The thing about choosing a project title is that you should know what the title's all about! Only then can you begin to carry out research on it in the right dirction! Choose a title that is clear to you, that you understand. If its too Abstract for you, forgo it and look for one you can explain in your sleep to your curious younger brother when woken up at 1:00 am at night.
Choosing the best topic for your Project Defense: Okay, so you've picked a topic. You understand its aims and objectives intuitively. Is there any thing else that you need to know that can help you decide if the topic you have chosen is the best one for you?
Here's a tip.
Choose a topic that will solve something in your immediate environment. That way you will get more marks as you are targeting real-life issues in your society and you it will be viewed that you are using the knowledge gained from your soon-to-concluded-education to contribute to the developmental uplifting of your immediate environment.
Try not to choose a topic like:
"An Adaptive Programming Model for Fault-Tolerant Distributed Computing"
It may sound good and all but does it solve the immediate problems experience in a developing third world country like ours? Most of the topics that we gather online come from sources which belong to the developed world. The developed Nations have overcome the issues of constant electricity, cheap and affordable internet services and a conducive environment for living. So the type of project that their students will be solving will be research topics to discover new ways and algorithms for solving already existing solved problems like the one in the topic I gave above: Already there are many Adaptive Programming Models in existence but this project seeks to create one that will over come the problems associated with the already existing models. This project will be of use to the environment of the Developed World, since almost every aspect of their society is based on the computer, hence it makes sense to create models that will make them more fault tolerant so that they can function more efficiently. In many developing Nations like ours, where not even 2% of our society is based on the workings of the computer, of what real use will such a topic have for us? Why seek to improve a model that is not even in operation in our immediate environment? We have to think of this when choosing topics for our Final Year Projects.
Now consider this topic:
'Online NAFDAC Registration and Verification Solution"
Ever bought a drug and discovered that it did not work for you? Yet if you checked for the NAFDAC registration number you would see one. How can you be sure that the number wasn't just printed on the drug's container and is a fake one? Is there any way you can be sure that the NAFDAC registration number you see is real? How can you verify that claim? Is there an easily accessible medium by which ordinary members of the public like you and I can check to see if a drug has been registered without going through tedious bureaucratic procedures? If the drug cannot be verified is there a way we can report the fake drug to NAFDAC?
Looking at the above, we can clearly see that we have a problem predominant in our society that has yet to be solved. Why go perfecting algorithms and models when your people are in danger of consuming fake drugs-an issue that you can tackle with your acquired knowledge of computer science?
Now if you were a Nigerian Computer Science Professor and two students came up with their project titles, one the Model Improvement Title and the other, the NAFDAC Verification Title, which of the two titles would you believe if implemented would aid the Nigerian society more? Your guess is as good as mine!
Need to find similar topics relevant to our environment like the one above? Check Here

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