Computer - Human Interaction in Symbolic Computation

The well attended March 1994 HIse workshop in Amsterdam was a very lively con ference which stimulated much discussion and human-human interaction. As the editor of this volume points out, the Amsterdam meeting was just part of a year-long project that brought many people together from many parts of the world. The value of the effort was not only in generating new ideas, but in making people aware of work that has gone on on many fronts in using computers to make mathematics more understandable. The author was very glad he attended the workshop. In thinking back over the conference and in reading the papers in this collection, the author feels there are perhaps four major conclusions to be drawn from the current state of work: 1. graphics is very important, but such features should be made as easy to use as possible; 2. symbolic mathematical computation is very powerful, but the user must be able to see "intermediate steps"; 3. system design has made much progress, but for semester-long coursework and book-length productions we need more tools to help composition and navigation; 4. monolithic systems are perhaps not the best direction for the future, as different users have different needs and may have to link together many kinds of tools. The editor of this volume and the authors of the papers presented here have also reached and documented similar conclusions.