Section 1 What you need - Octave/Matlab
ΒΆThis course is going to heavily emphasize programming - making mathematics useful by application. The only way to learn the techniques we are going to study is by actually using them. While standard techniques are prebuilt into various mathematical languages, we are going to be constructing our own implementations to solve problems.
The language that we are going to use is called Octave. Octave is an open-source (that is, free) language designed to be compatible with Matlab (which is an industry standard tool, but alas, not free. Matlab is installed on lab computers all over campus and on classroom computers. All code should work in both languages). Octave is available on Mac, PC, and Linux based computers. You should download and install it (or pay for a student license for Matlab, which is $50) as soon as possible.
You can find a link to Octave here: https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/.
Alternatively, if you'd like to work in Matlab, you can find the student version here: https://www.mathworks.com/store/link/products/student/new?s_tid=ac_buy_sv_cta, with the relevant version being $49.99.
I will provide detailed help getting everything installed if you have trouble.
Addendum: You will need a current installation https://www.python.org/downloads/. Once it is installed, you can run the command pip install sympy, which will install all the symbolic support.