Mailman 3 January 2003 - Edu-sig

re: Where mathematics comes from
by Arthur 29 Jan '03

29 Jan '03

Kirby asks- >Is ActiveState's Pythonwin also incompatible with PyGeo then? Was curious myself. The answer, yep. Quite incompatible. With the added attraction that I get the opportunity to notify Bill Gates of the problem when PythonWin closes down suddenly after closing a VPython window. Its all hard for me to understand. PythonWin is a Windows executable based on the scintilla library. And the behavior is as described. Scite is a Windows executable based on the scintilla library - and VPython windows shuts down quite politely. Were it not for that fact that VPython runs so smoothly on a number of other text editors I would conclude there is something fundamentally flawed in its design. Bruce Sherwood actually reported the problem of VPython running under the revised IDLE fork. It is actually quite ugly. Rather than a clean, but unwanted, shutdown that you get with the old IDLE, you get a deadlock and a window that is unresponsive in any way. Essentially an entire systems crash - as extensive of a crash as I've come across occuring under XP. It was acknowledged to be a bug. But I haven't seen anything subsequent in the messages or check-ins to indicate it has been fixed. Wish I understood more about what underlies all this - technically. Art

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re: Where mathematics comes from
by Arthur 28 Jan '03

28 Jan '03

>Yes, this is a key question. Do you know for a fact that this >experiment will fail? I was hoping wxPython was enough different >that it'd sort of "stay out of the way" of the Tk event loop. >Maybe not though. Is ActiveState's Pythonwin also incompatible >with PyGeo then? The issue is running VPython, not so much PyGeo. A VPython script runs fine when imported into either IDLE or PyCrust. BUT, in both cases - I just tried it - closing the VPython graphics window also closes the rest of the environment - whether it is IDLE or PyCrust. Frankly I'm not too hung about this at the moment. PyGeo is not really designed to be run interactively - though, as I mentioned, I might eventually get there. So its not a PyCrust thing in any case, as of now. And IDLE is one of maybe a hundred text editors that might be suitable for creating and running Python/VPython scripts. Its probably one of the few that would have a problem running VPython scripts, as far as I am aware. And that problem is scheduled to go way, quite soon. I guess I don't see it the issue too much since I never used IDLE for script writing in any case. Hopefully PyGeo will reach an audience where the need to have an environment spoon fed to them to that degree will not be a big issue. Though I do intend to point folks in need to the Scite site, at least until the IDLE issue is resolved. I have, BTW, what I think is a nice VPython distro for Windows done. Picked the brain of the IDLE setup.py, among other, to get there. The self installing executable is is under 400k. The source distro under 300k - tested with VC6. It includes all VPython related files - demos, docs, (and licenses :) ). It places itself politely under a site-packages directory. Happy to send it along to anyone. E-mail at my reply, if interestered. Art

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re: Where mathematics comes from
by Arthur 28 Jan '03

28 Jan '03

> Must I use IDLE? Can't I use PyCrust? PyCrust is an interactive shell. PyGeo is not designed to work fully from the interactive shell. In other words it does not draw progressively, command by command from the shell. As it uses VPython for rendering, and VPython does have this facility it is probable that I could have designed it to do so. It would definitely be an great enhancement to PyGeo. I am waiting patiently for you or Patrick to help me figure out how to do it ;). Art

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re: Where mathematics comes from
by Arthur 28 Jan '03

28 Jan '03

>But any script can be run from the shell, provided the code has a >triggering key word, like run() or doit(). I'd like to be able >to go something like: > >>> from pygeo.examples import * > >>> islamic6.run() OK. For that PyCrust and IDLE should be at least equal. But I do wonder. The question is whether IDLE (old, regular IDLE) closes when you close islamic6. The single process issue that generally plagues VPython scripts run in IDLE. And how PyCrust behaves. I'm totally dismantled now - testing installs with distutils, but I'll play with both IDLE and PyCrust when I get re-mantled. But the further enticing possiblity exists - and this is my oblem/fault - that PyGeo could draw instance by instance as it is created from the command line. Not normally something one would consider a possiblity, but VPython does exactly that, and so it might just be a matter of reconfiguring, or refiguring some PyGeo code. Maybe I could find a way to toggle it into command line mode. I've thought about this before, but haven't done much to attact it yet. Could be anything from quite simple, to near impossible, to implement. I've narrowed it down that far ;). Art

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re: Where mathematics comes from
by Arthur 27 Jan '03

27 Jan '03

>Well, why make the Windows people wait? Chompin at the bit here. That's what I like to hear. I'm still stymied a bit by the IDLE situation. Soon enough there will be no reason to distribute an IDLE with VPython, so my VPython distro does and will not include it. But if I take Kirby as an audience of one, as of the moment you may have nothing conventiently available to run VPython scripts without the older forked IDLE. Kirby - I'm happy to send along the VPython and PyGeo distros I prepared. In fact I would like a reaction, and a test. But you'd be on your own as to an editor. Though Scite/Scintilla - which Patrick mentioned in conjunction with PyCrust - would be an excellent choice, IMO. At http://www.scintilla.org Scintilla I would call a library for text editor functionality. SCite is an actual implementation of an editor, using the scintilla library. So you would want the Scite executable distribution. As a cross language guy it should be up your ally. Designed to work with many, many languages - that is as to basic editor functionality like keyword syntaxing etx. Highly customizable. Create and play with the local.properties file, which overrides the global.properties file. Let me know if I should send stuff along. Art Art

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re: Where mathematics comes from
by Arthur 27 Jan '03

27 Jan '03

>As a cross language guy it should be up your ally. Designed to work with many, many languages - that is as to basic editor functionality like keyword syntaxing etx. >Highly customizable. Create and play with the local.properties file, which overrides the global.properties file. In fact, I'll give *you* an assignment. How about adding a J Langauge lexer to scintilla. Shouldn't be too hard - particularly as, from my little expereince with J, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to lex. Art

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Where mathematics comes from
by John Miller 27 Jan '03

27 Jan '03

I recently came across a book by Lakoff & Nunez called "Where mathematics comes from : how the embodied mind brings mathematics into being". After reading the introduction, I jumped to the four appendices where the equation e^(pi)i = -1 is explained. I never thought I'd be able to understand that equation, but reading their explanation made it tantalizingly approachable. It may well be that much of why people were turned off to math in school can be explained by metaphoric deficiencies in the teaching of it. And they show how to rectify the situation with their (metaphor-based) take on how that particular equation might be better explained. Anyway, it'll probably take a few re-readings before I really get it, but at least now, there's a chance... John Miller Technology Services School of Education University of Michigan On Sunday, January 26, 2003, at 12:00 PM, ahimsa <ahimsa(a)onetel.net.uk> wrote: > That is probably the source of my own aversion to math: I hate to blame > my teachers and no doubt I was also probably a lazy sod :) - but > whatever it was, I now do have to work really hard to overcome that > resistance, despite my appreciation for the sheer beauty of geometry > and > algebra at the 'safer' and more 'abstract' level of a philosophical > appreciation.

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re: Where mathematics comes from
by Arthur 26 Jan '03

26 Jan '03

>So when do we get the new distro, with the site-packages locus, >rationalize Vpython and all that. I eagerly await the new and >improved Pretty much there as to the Windows distribution. Took some doing with VPython - since I want to go all the way and be able to provide a Windows source distro. Took me a while to get to the fact that I had to use the custom compile flags option of the distutils to successfully compile VPython under VC6. So I have at this point Windows source distro and Windows self installing exe for both VPython and PyGeo. Have to decide whether to try to combine them into one distro. Any opinion? Got permission to wipe my wife's old machine and install Linux. So I guess that's the next step. But I'm a weekend warrior at this point. So it will be slower than I would wish. Art

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re: Where mathematics comes from
by Arthur 26 Jan '03

26 Jan '03

>After reading the introduction, I jumped to the four appendices >where the equation >e^(pi)i = -1 15 ways of looking at a blackbird. I see a half-turn around the unit circle on the complex plane, with 1+0j as the starting point. That is, we a pointing to a point (-1,0) on the complex plane, by way of its polar coordinates. e is a numerical value - the numerical value that makes this so. Not fully satisfactory, by any means, but is a step toward a geometric approach. PyGeo's new version has does alot with the exploration of the geometry of complex numbers. Art Art

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Re: Edu-sig digest, Vol 1 #638 - 9 msgs
by Arthur 25 Jan '03

25 Jan '03

>If you want a guinea pig - try me: I could benefit from a decent math >education and I'd be upfront in giving you feedback!! I'm horribly predictable. THE THIRTEEN BOOKS OF EUCLID'S ELEMENTS translated from the Text of Heinberg with Introduction and Commentary by Thomas L. Heath Second Edition (orignally published 1908) In print Dover Publications, Inc. Just get through Books 1 & 2 - with the commentaries, and *doing the constructions*. The fact that you already know the substance of what you will encounter there from other sources, does not alllow you to opt out of this as a prerequisite. In other words, it's quite possible that you have already seen the movie version. Doesn't count. Kirby, I'm quite sure, would disagree with this advice, BTW. I don't really know what he would consider as a prerequisie. Art

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