Mailman 3 March 2002 - Edu-sig

Analyzing algorithms...
by Jeffrey Elkner 25 Mar '02

25 Mar '02

After attending Pai Chou's wonderful presentation, "Algorithm Education in Python" at Python10, I got permission from the instructor of an algorithms course I am currently taking to do our programming assignments in Python (after first assuring him that they would not be difficult to read ;-) Our first assignment is to implement merge and heap sort and then to compare them empirically as to the number of assignments and comparisons made by each. I've written the sorts. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the best way to do the empirical analysis? Is there a better way than just creating counters and then littering my code with increment statements? Please let me know if you have any ideas? Thanks! jeff elkner yorktown high school arlington, va

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Re: Edu-sig digest, Vol 1 #494
by Arthur Siegel 23 Mar '02

23 Mar '02

Mathias write - >I doesn't kill me if you guys don't understand the power >of DrScheme. But does it bother you a little bit? Power we don't understand isn't power - as to us - at all. Theories how we got here? Seriously. Art

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Re: Edu-sig digest, Vol 1 #494 - 7 msgs
by Matthias Felleisen 22 Mar '02

22 Mar '02

Not looking to knock DrScheme. But my experience was my experience. And hopefully I am not doing any harm by reporting my experience to Mathias. I have never experienced DrScheme in the context of a formal curriculum. And since that is how it is intended to be used, Mathias should not be shocked that perhaps it does not work quite as well outside of that kind of setting. No offense taken. I doesn't kill me if you guys don't understand the power of DrScheme. Just take a look at make executable, formerly called make launcher. Edit your programs with Emacs. Vi, for heaven's sake. Or ignore DrScheme and its lessons. Fine, too. -- Matthias

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Re: [Edu-sig] The right learning environment
by Matthias Felleisen 22 Mar '02

22 Mar '02

Art, take a look at 200 and how the development of CGI servlets is totally integrated. Kirby explained the rest to you. -- Matthias

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Re: The right learning environment
by arthur.siegel＠rsmi.com 22 Mar '02

22 Mar '02

>Yet the latter is a wonderfuls scratch pad in which to test/learn >the basics of the language, with immediate feedback. >To bypass the shell is to make a huge pedagogical >error, IMO. Again - it was fundamental to my attraction to Python, and was used and is used by myself as an essential ingredient to a Python 'environment'. My counter-point - if any - is that it is particularly exciting as a feature when one understands it to be a builtin Python capacity. Mathias' experience is that there are Python users who don't understand the interactive prompt capabilities of Python, and rightl;y bemoans the fact. Don't know who those users are or how they got that way. I make the more minor point that it is a shame if folks would misunderstand that the interactive promt is something brought to them by and available only through IDLE. Though I find IDLE an elegant and fully satisfactory way to get at it. How to get it all? Art

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Re: The right learning environment
by arthur.siegel＠rsmi.com 21 Mar '02

21 Mar '02

>I don't find that sad. It's good news. Here and elsewhere >among Pythonistas, I think you'll find little argument re >Python's suitability as a teaching language. Only preaching >to the choir is what'd be sad. In fact 'only preaching' would be sad. As are you, I am well past preaching and well into doing. Art

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Re: The right learning environment
by Arthur Siegel 21 Mar '02

21 Mar '02

Jeff writes - >Is this missing from Python UI (IDLE, PythonWin, PyCrust)? >Couldn't these User Interfaces have an addition window >for a lesson or other resource to appear? One man's bug is another man's feature. Can I ask you why it is important that the lesson appear as a window of the user interface? Would an html page in a browser work - that approach having become more or less the standard way of supplementing a GUI with help or any other text and graphic based supplementary material? What of course is much more interesting and important is what the *content* of those lessons will be - whether they pop out of the GUI window or exist in a separate web page. I plead absolutely guilty of having helped get edu-sig off on another discussion of form at the expense of content - ironically having done so in trying to make the point that perhaps the interface is not at all that important, There seems to be some prevailing sentiment otherwise. I will respectfully disagree, and go silent on the issue. But would love to join any discussion of curriculum content - about which I of course also have a host of opinions (along with a decent amount of code). Sad and ironic that the most satisfying discussions I have had about Python and education have been conducted outside the Python community - mostly with me as an advocate, and - from all I can ell - seeming to be making perfect sense to people. Impressive people. And here I never get a sense of making sense at all. Yes, I find it frustrating. Art

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Re: The right learning environment
by Arthur Siegel 21 Mar '02

21 Mar '02

>As per your non-linear approach, Arthur, I think your >tendency to jump ahead (to "chapter 6") and preview is >good, and worth building in to a curriculum. Students >want to see where this is all leading, i.e. what will >I be able to do after I finish this course of study? Along as you try to keep in mind that calling it an "approach" in my case is probably giving it too much credit. It's an "is". Happens to be the *only* way I can effectively learn. All I am advocating is a curriculum that accounts for/ allows as legitimate this style of learning, among others. Crap. I think I'm sounding like a Piaget-ite. The devil of course as always being in the details. Art

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Re: The right learning environment
by Jeff Sandys 20 Mar '02

20 Mar '02

Kirby said: > DrScheme and Python both have shell environments and this is > where to start with newbies IMO, engaging in simple > calculator-style dialog in order to learn the grammar > of the language (either one). ... > DrScheme has rich on-line teaching resources. Is this missing from Python UI (IDLE, PythonWin, PyCrust)? Couldn't these User Interfaces have an addition window for a lesson or other resource to appear? ---------------------- Jason said: > What's confusing to beginners? Here's my Python A-list ... I agree that many of these path issues are hard to figure, (I still can't get Piddle and PIL configured to work, if someone could only draw me a directory map...) It is the one thing that scares me away from teaching Python (on another platform, no less) to younger students, is fumbling around trying to solve a path problem while the student is thinking, if the instructor can't solve it how am I going to learn this. Thanks, Jeff Sandys __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards� http://movies.yahoo.com/

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Re: [Edu-sig] Re: The right learning environment
by arthur.siegel＠rsmi.com 20 Mar '02

20 Mar '02

>Notepad, however, is a proprietary text editor on a >non-open-source OS. OS is not a *religious* thing with me. In my case I was more than happy to pay the $20 (at the time) shareware fee for Textpad - a Windows based, closed source, editor which was configurable enough for me - easy to add Python (and PyGeo for that matter) syntax highlighting, easy to have the interpreter called with or without arguments That being said - I am making some conscious effort to do more on Linux and hope to be able to make it my default working environment. And that more out of principle than convenience. >DrScheme has rich on-line teaching resources. The >language itself is able to negotiate on-line protocols >such as http, although the tutorials don't focus on >this so much. Given Scheme is as capable in principle >of doing CGI type stuff and Python or Perl, it'd make >sense to have more demos and examples of this in the >Scheme syllabi (both on-line and book form), likewise >XML parsing. Many times, this is where students are >focussed, on web server issues. Not looking to knock DrScheme. But my experience was my experience. And hopefully I am not doing any harm by reporting my experience to Mathias. I have never experienced DrScheme in the context of a formal curriculum. And since that is how it is intended to be used, Mathias should not be shocked that perhaps it does not work quite as well outside of that kind of setting. >This is true of both Python and DrScheme -- any text >editor will do, but some are more "program editors" than >text editors (like Vi and Emacs) meaning they're syntax >aware. If that is true of DrScheme it is very, very hard to understand it from inside it. I understand (now) that it is true of the Scheme implementation underlying DrScheme - but DrScheme itself did not get across to me that there was a way to run things from outside of itself. And I am hoping it never gets to the point where folks may run into the same kind of confusion (because you are probably right - I was confused) about IDLE - though I don't now see anything to indicate that things are on a trajectory where that is a real concern. Art

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