Mailman 3 January 2003 - Edu-sig

Where the Girls Aren't
by Arthur 12 Jan '03

12 Jan '03

FWIW, The Ny Times has an article today about the lack of interest in computer science by female students. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/edlife/12STABINE.html?todaysheadlines Nothing new said, and what is said is said kind of badly. So badly, that if it were written by a man, rather than a women, there would proably be hell to pay. But I thought I'd mention it, only because its maybe interesting to others that the Times decided to fill space with the article. Art

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Mistake
by Lars Nygård 12 Jan '03

12 Jan '03

Will someone please remove my name from the mailing list!

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Status of the CP4E Project
by ahimsa 12 Jan '03

12 Jan '03

Hello I have recently discovered this mailing list and was hoping that someone might be able to give me a quick and dirty synopsis of where this project is at (I understand that funding is an issue and has largely put brakes on the project) and where subscribers to this list see the project going from here. Thank you Andrew -- ________________________%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%____________________________ Proudly sent using Ximian Evolution 1.2.1 on a Linux Red Hat 8.0 box.

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Independent study topic?
by Jacob Lee 11 Jan '03

11 Jan '03

Hi. I'm a junior in high school who has essentially run out of computing courses. I took Computer Science AP freshman year (got a 5 on the AB exam) and have the opportunity to perform an independent study in some topic this semester. The question is what area of study to pursue. Ideally, any topic will have a textbook available, be easily self-taught, and be something that will benefit from being able to devote 50 minutes/day to it. This means that another programming language would not be a suitable topic, since I can learn that over the Internet (and yes, I've already learned Python :-p). I have identified the following textbooks as possibilities and was wondering if anyone has comments or suggestions: Introduction to Genetic Algorithms Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science Applied Cryptography Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (the LISP book) I'm leaning towards Concrete Math, but I'm concerned that it might be too hard (I'm currently in Calculus BC, which means I'll essentially be taking Calc II concurrently with the independent study). Does anyone have experience with this textbook? Also, if anyone has any other suggestions that aren't on this list or opinions on these textbooks, that would be wonderful. Thanks in advance. -- Jacob Lee (ArthurDenture) <alphac(a)flashmail.com> Digital signature attached. If it's not signed, it didn't come from me. Would you send all your mail on postcards? Un-encrypted e-mail is just that.

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re: Fw: pyGeo problems: linux progress
by Arthur 11 Jan '03

11 Jan '03

>No, distutils is *not* overkill. Please consider using distutils; it >will make others' lives so much easier! If you get stuck, I'll try to >help. Oh well, another learning curve. Sure its not bad. Having recently been well rewarded by overcoming my resistance to the small reStructuredText learning curve, I'll dig in. >Is PyGeo itself currently a top-level package, or is it a collection >of top-level modules? If the latter, I strongly recommend that you >make it a top-level package (and yes, changing all your imports is a >royal pain; but it's worth it, and again your future users will thank >you). I am sure what you saying here will mean more to me after I dig in a bit. And greatly appreciate your offer to tutor a bit. Art

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re: Fw: pyGeo problems: linux progress
by Arthur 11 Jan '03

11 Jan '03

Guido writes: >There are several solutions: etc. Thanks much. Guess I should probably redo my distribution and installation instructions to place PyGeo in "site-packages" by default. I'm thinking disutils is overkill for PyGeo so I'm just doing a .zip file distro. But I can and will, after I experiment and confirm I undersand all the implications, change to a "site-packages" placement for PyGeo. Art

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Join our Programming community?
by mimi＠programgeeks.net 10 Jan '03

10 Jan '03

Hi, I found your email today on a website.. I am emailing a selected few to see if they will join a new online Programmer community. It is found at http://www.programgeeks.net/forums . It really means alot to us if you could join. =) See you there? Tony Mimi mimi(a)programgeeks.net P.S. This is NOT SPAM, it is a personal invitation, your email has been HANDPICKED, you are only being emailed at the same time.

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Re: [Edu-sig] ANN: PyGeo version .8a released
by Arthur 09 Jan '03

09 Jan '03

Lars - I posted to edu-sig(a)python.org and python-list(a)python.org Though I am sure your feelings on my posting of the announcement are fully justified, I have no way of filtering my messages to those forums out for you. I think it is doable from your end. I'm not very technical about those kinds of things, so wouldn't know how to help you. But others have promised that they have done just that as to my e-mails to these groups. Good luck with it. And thanks for the feedback. Art ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lars Nygård" <ny(a)adslhome.dk> To: "Arthur" <ajs(a)ix.netcom.com> Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 10:19 AM Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] ANN: PyGeo version .8a released > Please don't send me any more mails! > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Arthur" <ajs(a)ix.netcom.com> > To: <edu-sig(a)python.org> > Cc: <python-list(a)python.org> > Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 2:15 AM > Subject: [Edu-sig] ANN: PyGeo version .8a released

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HNY
by Steve Edwards 09 Jan '03

09 Jan '03

Seasons greetings and a Happy New Year to all my Pythonesque friends. :-) Have a great 2003. Best regards, Steve Edwards Ô¿Ô¬ steve(a)nowfindme.com -steve(a)totalqualitytraining.com www.nowfindme.com - www.totalqualitytraining.com There is a wonderful, mystical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life--happiness, freedom, and peace of mind--are always attained by giving them to someone else. Author unknown

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ANN: PyGeo version .8a released
by Arthur 08 Jan '03

08 Jan '03

ANN: PyGeo version .8a released ---------------------------------------------------------- see http://home.netcom.com/~ajs Something quite young can grow up a quite some in a year. I believe PyGeo has. And what is PyGeo? : ==================== PyGeo is a dynamic geometry laboratory and toolkit requiring Python2.2 and VPython (and Numeric as distributed with VPython). PyGeo may be used to explore the most basic concepts of Euclidean geometry at an introductory level, including by elementary schools students and their teachers. But is particularly suitable for exploring more advanced geometric topics - such as projective geometry and the geometry of complex numbers. The intent is to bring a rich visual experience to the study of both synthetic and analytic geometry The inspiration: ================ PyGeo is inspired by other dynamic geometry applications - Cabri, Geometers Sketchpad, cinderella and, in particular, David Joyce's wonderful open source java code which is used to create his inspiring site of Euclids Elements with the classic constructions in web-enabled dynamic form. What distinguishes PyGeo ======================== The 3rd dimension ------------------ PyGeo was built from inception to take advantage of the current generation of 3d graphic capabilities (applied geometry, in itself, of course). While this has a certain appeal just on motivational grounds, the importance of this aspect of PyGeo is, it is contended, of a significantly higher order. The study even of the 2 dimensional geometries beyond the simplest Euclidean concepts *requires* 3 dimensions for thorough investigation, or where the enhancement of intuition is a goal. The visualization of the projective geometry of the plane requires the facility for the visualization of the projection from plane to plane. Well accomplished in 3d space. In the exploration of the geometry of the complex plane, the visualization of the projection to the unit sphere adds an important dimension. The 3rd dimension. The Python Programming Language --------------------------------------- The choice of Python as the implementation language for PyGeo goes well beyond the fact of my own comfort with it as a development language. The choice is in fact quite integral to PyGeo's educational purpose and design. Python code is often referred to as "executable pseudo-code". This helps bring some unique characteristics to PyGeo as tool for the study of geometric concepts. Because of the level of programming abstraction provided by Python and the accessibility to its code as readable text, the analytics driving the rendering of the synthetic, visual geometry is highly exposed. One can explore the analytics at work. The abstract becomes much less abstract, and the two classical approaches to the study of geometry can and should become, much more coherently, one. PyGeo, as open source Python, should be readily extensibleby anyone inclined toward the effort. Extend the functionality, create new primitives and interfaces for study of specialized geometric areas. In this sense PyGeo is not an application, as such. It hopes to be a laboratory and a framework, the beginning of a structure for imaginative exploration. And play. And, hopefully, some worthwhile fun. Site for download ================= http://home.netcom.com/~ajs License: ======== GPL Documentation: ============== The release includes source code (of course) and numerous demos, but the user documentation is still in progress - thank you reStructuredText. Feedback ======== mailto:ajs@ix.netcom.com

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