Mailman 3 October 2000 - Edu-sig

Another Forth remark
by Dirk-Ulrich Heise 08 Dec '00

08 Dec '00

Funnyly i stumbled across this: One of the original aims of Forth was to erase the boundary between user and programmer - to give all possible power to anyone who had occasion to use a computer. Nothing in the above labeling or remarks should be construed to mean that this goal has been abandoned. at http://www.taygeta.com/forth/dpansa15.htm (end of the first paragraph) Seems to be commonplace amongst language inventors ;-) Maybe they're all on a mission... Dipl.Inform. Dirk-Ulrich Heise hei(a)adtranzsig.de dheise(a)debitel.net

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O'Reilly Network Building a Black Hole With OpenGL
by Jason Cunliffe 31 Oct '00

31 Oct '00

A beautifully illustrated article: Building a Black Hole with openGL http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2000/09/15/blackhole.html

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VisAd anyone ?
by Jason Cunliffe 21 Oct '00

21 Oct '00

Hello Just checked a link to Bill Hubbard's good work on VisAD and was delighted to find there is now a JPython module... I thought Art and others here might appreciate really this: http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/visad.html and in particular http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/README.python <quote> VisAD is a Java component library for interactive and collaborative visualization and analysis of numerical data. The name VisAD is an acronym for "Visualization for Algorithm Development". The system combines: The use of pure Java for platform independence and to support data sharing and real-time collaboration among geographically distributed users. Support for distributed computing is integrated at the lowest levels of the system using Java RMI distributed objects. A general mathematical data model that can be adapted to virtually any numerical data, that supports data sharing among different users, different data sources and different scientific disciplines, and that provides transparent access to data independent of storage format and location (i.e., memory, disk or remote). The data model has been adapted to netCDF, HDF-5, FITS, HDF-EOS, McIDAS, Vis5D, GIF and JPEG file formats. A general display model that supports interactive 3-D, data fusion, multiple data views, direct manipulation, collaboration, and virtual reality. The display model has been adapted to Java3D and Java2D and used in an ImmersaDesk virtual reality display. Data analysis and computation integrated with visualization to support computational steering and other complex interaction modes. Support for two distinct communities: developers who create domain- specific systems based on VisAD, and users of those domain-specific systems. VisAD is designed to support a wide variety of user interfaces, ranging from simple data browser applets to complex applications that allow groups of scientists to collaboratively develop data analysis algorithms. Developer extensibility in as many ways as possible. The visad.python package defines a Python-based language for using VisAD. The classes in this package are: JPythonEditor - an editor for VisAD Python scripts that can be incorporated in application programs JPythonFrame - a program and GUI for editing and running VisAD Python scripts JPythonMethods - a set of functions for accessing VisAD that can be called from VisAD Python scripts </quote> cheers Jason ________________________________________________________________ Jason CUNLIFFE = NOMADICS['Interactive Art and Technology'].DesignDirector

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socratic methods
by Michal Wallace 18 Oct '00

18 Oct '00

Hi, I'm new here, but I've been lurking a while, and it seems this list is a really awesome mutli-disciplinary sort of community. I'm really impressed with all you bright people on here and the quality of discussions.. :) Anyway, I thougt I'd bring this up: Any of y'all ever read the theory of constraint books by Eli Goldratt? He teaches (perfectly logical but quite unconventional) business practices through socratic methods and story. Here's a quick example: http://www.goldratt.com/chpt11.htm One of his big things is a set of thinking tools (described in a novel called "It's not Luck").. The idea is you figure out the cause-effect relationships that lead to a current undesireable situation, and work your way back to the core issues. This is called a current reality tree. I made one for myself not too long ago: http://www.sabren.com/upgrade/charts/CRT20000930.gif Once you understand the current system, you can map out a future reality tree that shows in precise logical steps what you want to happen. Then you build a transition tree to connect the two. The interesting thing is that you can also think of it as a teaching tool. You can map out trees of current and desired thinking habits, and build a transition tree that leads logically from one way of thinking to another. Now it takes a great deal of human thought to come up with these trees, but once they've been mapped out, just about anyone can follow them. (Look at the link above. The if/then flow goes from bottom to top unless there's an arrow pointing the other way) I think it would be really cool if a computer could be programmed with a tree like this to teach people using the socratic method. That is, it asks the user questions, and based on the answer either helps the user to understand things better, or progresses along the tree to the next step.. I don't know too much about computer aided instruction, but I know I've never seen a computer that used socratic methods to inform people.. They usually present information rather than ask questions. (or if they ask questions, it's like a test, not a conversation).. Anyway, I'd like to build a system like this to help with my own thinking and to help other people. The system's called plato [python logic and truth objects; it'll have a lot of prolog concepts in there, and double as a general mechanical-reasoning library for other python programmers] Anyway, is anyone interested in helping, or at least discussing it on this list? :) Cheers, - Michal ------------------------------------------------------------------------ www.manifestation.com www.sabren.com www.linkwatcher.com www.zike.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------

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That's where the Forth hides.
by Dirk Heise 18 Oct '00

18 Oct '00

For those who are interested in my ongoing Forth-in-Python works, you can get it by joining http://www.egroups.com/files/SynthetoForth/ and looking into the files section. This was the easiest way to place it somewhere on the net, without having to mess with CVS at SourceForge or so, or creating my own website. (I'm really not interested in investing time into Web content creation or so, just had to place those files somewhere for communication.) Of course, if you don't wanna give egroups your personal data, you might as well mail me directly... at the moment, i'm rewriting it every day a little. It's quite tricky to get it right so the real Forth magic gets preserved; Chuck Moore is said to have it rewritten a multitude of times before it became the classical 70ies Forth. Be warned, maybe my newer versions get too tricky to be of interest for a little educational intro into postfix. I'm seeing now that the infix vs. postfix syntax item is only very surfacial, the magic is much deeper (the key to the extensibility of Forth). (still i don't know whether it can be delivered to other languages. I don't know whether is has ever been tried, or whether there are such languages. Maybe it can only work with a language as simple as Forth, and every attempt to give the language more syntactical sugar destroys it. The truth hides.) Dirk

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Doing Symbolics in Python
by Jason Cunliffe 18 Oct '00

18 Oct '00

Hello I am wondering what anyone here thinks of this: http://cens.ioc.ee/projects/pysymbolic/ PySymbolic provides a tool for doing elementary symbolic calculations in Python. Currently, only simplification and differentiation of Python expressions are implemented. The project is in alpha stage. PySymbolic design proposal at http://cens.ioc.ee/projects/pysymbolic/design.html Jason

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Teaching Python at a Junior College Level
by Dean Nevins 18 Oct '00

18 Oct '00

I am a CS teacher who teaches a general service course (both majors and non-majors) and in it we have a programming component. Currently, we are teaching BASIC to the students but I _really_ don't like the bad habits that this language promotes and I like the ease of explaining programming concepts in Python to both CS majors and NON-CS majors. However, my problem is not the language but in trying to get a broader acceptance of Python as a language equivalent to BASIC in people's minds. We know that Python is better ('natch :-) but people responsible for transferring the credit to another school often will ask for BASIC specifically. Any ideas how to fix this problem? This problem is much more important than you might realize. If schools won't accept classes that have Python in them, then it doesn't matter how much better Python is than BASIC, the classes cannot be taught. Either that or you end up with boutique classes with nobody in them. Dean P.S. I'm in California if that matters.

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outoftouch
by Jason Cunliffe 12 Oct '00

12 Oct '00

Travelling for the next week : no email probably. Thanks for the great discussions of recent weeks. Been thinking a lot more about PPP = Python Poetry Project. Hope to flesh it out while on the road and resume the thread when I get back. Jason

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Re: Teaching Middle-School Math with Python
by Matthias Felleisen 10 Oct '00

10 Oct '00

Fred Barlett writes: The only other languages I found in my web searches used below the college level were Java, C/C++, (Visual)Basic, and Scheme -- none of which would be appropriate at the level I'm contemplating. But Python, for all its virtues, is a relatively obscure language. It's a good bet that no one at the Board of Ed has heard of it! Hmph -- our project has used Scheme very successfully at the middle school level. We have had one teacher write that the kids were so excited about the algebra class that she had to ask for the books back so that they wouldn't work too far ahead. Several of the kids' parents asked her what was wrong with their kids -- they volunteered to stay at school after hours and do math. Also, as you start working with educators and educrats you will find out that "obscure" isn't helpful at all. If technology isn't fashionable, and I mean "big fashionable" it's an uphill struggle. They don't want their kids to learn to think. They want to have public relation successes ("We teach the latest technology that MS produces and that was on the cover of the economist"). -- Matthias

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JPython and CP4E
by Arthur Siegel 09 Oct '00

09 Oct '00

L. Humbert wrote: >Isn't it possible to tell, where to find *.jar, so everyone interested, >can study it with Python Unfortunately I don't currently have a site to do that. But I'll work on it and get it done and let folks know. As it happens I am quite a JPython advocate myself and glad to see it mentioned on the CP4E list and to find that people are in fact working with it in an educational context. For starters, the kind of list of Python resources that Jason recently posted up for graphics expands exponentially when one includes the ability to use JPython. Java3D, for example, is very well accessible to Python code via JPython. The reality is that there are vaster Java than Python resources in most every category. I found it liberating to know I could explore the Java world of resources while staying close to home, being Python. I am trying to design what I am doing in Java to be easily scriptable in JPython - the beauty being that if your Java classes are designed to qualify as beans, than you can use normal Python keyword syntax to set the class's attributes on initialization. (I think I said that right). ART

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