Why Upgrade to Fathom 2?
Fathom just got better! Four years of work by the development team has resulted in Fathom Dynamic Data™ Software, Version 2, a major upgrade to the award-winning and highly acclaimed initial release of Fathom. Here are a few of the highlights:
Ease of use. Almost half of the development effort
has gone into making an already easy-to-use program
even more user-friendly. They’ve lowered
barriers to getting started by dramatically improving the help system and
adding one-minute movies that show basic skills. Colour coordination of key
words throughout the program makes it easier to keep track of what’s
going on. They’ve made more than 100 small changes to the formula
editor that make it much easier to use. And a new look makes Fathom beautiful!
Graphs! Because
they’ve made it possible to place
more than one attribute on an axis, you can make a whole
host of new graphs with the same drag-and-drop ease as before.
Get to the meaning of data and models with units and
unit algebra. Metres,
fortnights, and watts are just three of the more than 90 units Fathom now
understands, and can convert from one system to another, and use in algebraic
formulas with simplification. If attributes have units, then units propagate
everywhere from slopes of fitted lines to summary statistics.
Even more data, even more easily accessible. Access
U.S. census microdata (individuals who filled out the long form of the
census) from 1850 to 2000 with your choice of more than 50 attributes.
There are more than 100 new sample documents, and all 329 sample documents
are listed with descriptions in the help system, from which they can
be opened directly. And the “URL-drop” method
of importing data from web pages has been made to work even better and for
an even wider variety of sites. Finally, when you have collections that need “joining,” a
single drag and drop accomplishes the task!
Text formatting, complete with mathematical typesetting. Fathom
includes the text editor that comes with The Geometer’s Sketchpad Version
4, allowing you to format your annotations as you see fit, including font,
colour, symbols, fractions, and more.
New statistical capabilities. Add five-number summaries
to a summary table by menu command. Easily create correlation matrices by
dragging multiple, continuous attributes to summary tables. Use the new Linear
Model tool to create both simple and multiple regression models. Use new
functions such as linRegrPredicted and logRelativeError to create even more
compelling visualisations. And, with a host of new graphing capabilities,
go on even deeper explorations of data that Fathom 2 has made even easier
to acquire.
Even More Reasons!
There are many more changes and additions to Fathom 2 that make it easier to use and more powerful. Learn more about Fathom 2's new capabilities for Data, Graphs, Summary Tables, Formulas and the Formula Editor, and Statistical Objects, plus other miscellaneous improvements.
The Fathom team at Key Curriculum Press are extremely proud of Fathom 2. We hope you’ll try it out, upgrade, and let us know what you think.