Communicate Your Calculations using Mathcad

In the autumn of 2010, the authors set up a Mathcad course for students with a background in (pharmaceutical) technology. The aim of this course was to help students find their way in Mathcad: perhaps the only programming language that allows one to communicate with non-programmers. Secondly, this course was intended to refresh people's mathematical skills. To allow students to work on the course when and as they liked, the lecturers decided to try a 'do-it-yourself course' with lessons and exercises on the computer. They organized the course in such a way that when students worked on it for two hours per week, they could finish the course in twelve weeks. Ten PhD students and two technicians from the department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmacy of the University of Groningen tested the course. The valuable comments from the participants was helpful to write this book. Initially we intended to present all the material as Mathcad files, but the participants of the course told us that working with paper in parallel with the computer helped them to get an overview. As the files had to be transferred to paper anyway, the authors have put them together in this book, since they felt that it may help other persons with a life-science background interested in working with Mathcad. http://www.vssd.nl/hlf/a035.htm