Mailman 3 February 2003 - Edu-sig

sorry... but a question on xml...
by rmangaliag＠slu.edu.ph March 3, 2003

March 3, 2003

are there xml/xsl formatting objects processor in python??? sori, if this is not the most appropriate sig to ask this question... but thanks... atleast for reading... :) ------------------------------------------------- Email Service Provided by SLU-Net Saint Louis University ( http://www.slu.edu.ph ) -------------------------------------------------

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Test
by Micah Bedwell Feb. 25, 2003

Feb. 25, 2003

Anyone out there? Micah Bedwell System Administrator DonSueMor, Inc. Emeryville, CA. 94608 510.420.6943 micah(a)donsuemor.com

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apologies
by Arthur Feb. 22, 2003

Feb. 22, 2003

That last meant for python-list, not here. Promise. Art

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re: Case sensitivity
by Arthur Feb. 22, 2003

Feb. 22, 2003

> And so around and around we go, burning time and energy fruitlessly on a thread that will never give results because Guido's been frigthened by this newsgroup's > hostility on the subject. So it goes. Guess I was wrong in believing you were not going to go down this road. > But I hope that if some beginners ARE reading this thread, and starting to doubt of their sanity and common sense by hearing PRAISE of the wart that they are recognizing >as such, my words can hearten them: it IS a wart, you're right in disliking it, and you can "thank" attitudes such as this "remember to watch it" for its permanence. Guido succumbed to evidence. Which you will not let yourself succemb to. Beginners don't care. The only beginners - high schoolers - who had the nerve to post up here doing the debate, said so clearly. Their teachers overwhelmingly confirmed what they said. None of which speaks ultimately to the design issue, and what Alex prefers and why he prefers it. But it seems incredible that you would not overcome the temptation to press the beginner issue. Becuase that's exactly were the discussion went off track Round One, and will continue to go off track. You know what you know from your own experience. As I know from mine. And if I were working with twenty did API's a week, as you might be, I might see better your point. Its an advanced users issue, if its an issue at all. Art

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Well done is better than well said.
by Will Well Feb. 21, 2003

Feb. 21, 2003

Dear Candy, Hi, how are you? And the rest How's the job? any news? We're all fine. I had an eye check up and the doctor said my eyes are fine 20/20 with just a normal need for reading glasses due to age. How's your vision? Julie's ok now, but was in the hospital a couple of days a few weeks ago due to a very high fever. We all got scared although now relieved as tests proved everythings ok. I got a little job helping to run a small company selling Unix / Linux software and support. Interesting work and my colleague's a decent chap, so I'm glad. Doesn't pay much at all now since we're so small just two people but if we're clever enough with much work and perseverence we ought to be able to turn it around into a profitable business... its at least worth the effort for the time being. Please, say hello to everybody for me. Stay well and keep in touch, Yours sincerely, Larry -- The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. -- ______________________________________________ http://www.linuxmail.org/ Now with e-mail forwarding for only US$5.95/yr Powered by Outblaze

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Re: [Edu-sig] Python promises a revolution
by Kirby Urner Feb. 21, 2003

Feb. 21, 2003

At 11:01 PM 2/20/2003 +0000, Michael Williams wrote: >A bit of both. We've only got four half-day sessions to cover the >exercises in the handbook *and* a more substantial problem, so >anything we can comfortably lose without sacrificing useful background >we do. OOP is a sufficiently discrete topic that we can either take it >or leave it. So it's not just that it's hard, but also that it's big. >I think the procedural paradigm is much more graspable and intuitive >to our students, who are used to working through iterative calculations >by hand. Doing OOP properly would add at least a half-day (and probably >more if we did it properly) to the handbook. > >And you're right about its limited applications in Physics. None of >our exercises are best-solved using the OO paradigm, and we think >they're reasonably representative of the day-to-day numerical methods >grunt work of a physicist. > >Of course in an ideal work we'd cover other applications that do lend >themselves to the OO approach, such as modeling solid state systems. >You win some, you lose some ;-> >-- >Michael Yes, I can see where you'd need to be realistic about the time constraint. In some hypothetical future, students will be more prepared with a language coming in, because of this idea that computer languages provide an alternative algebra for learning maths (I liked your apology for the 'math' module -- US English spelling i.e. a singular instead of a plural noun). Given the favorable press, that computing with objects is supposed to let you think more in terms of the problem domain, than in artificial terms imposed by the computer, it'd seem tempting to talk more generally about physics as a search for generalizations in the face of many "black box" objects (e.g. atoms), the inner workings of which we may probe and model, to build up a sense of what the properties and behaviors might be. >>> from atoms import Atom, Neutron, Proton >>> v = Atom(p=7,n=7) >>> v.name() Nitrogen-14 >>> v = v + Neutron # hit by cosmic ray >>> v = v - Proton # proton goes flying >>> v Carbon-14 >>> v.radioactive() True >>> v.halflife(unit = 'years') 5700 A reason for talking about objects even in an intro course is it gives you access to generalizations about the Python primitives and helps explain the object.method() or object.property syntax that one typically uses, even when not defining classes of one's own. E.g. given we're likely to talk about the differences among arrays, dictionaries, tuples, it makes sense to probe them as "black boxes", using dir(). >>> dir({}) # list guts of {}-object (dictionary) ['__class__', '__cmp__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__str__', 'clear', 'copy', 'get', 'has_key', 'items', 'iteritems', 'iterkeys', 'itervalues', 'keys', 'popitem', 'setdefault', 'update', 'values'] I just thought of a good way to introduce the new 'set' type (new in 2.3). Use it to find what methods are common to lists and dictionaries (or any two primitives), vs. what methods are unique to each. set primitives will make this easy. Kirby

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Python promises a revolution
by Javier Escobar Feb. 21, 2003

Feb. 21, 2003

Hi freinds, Yesterday my undergraduate proyect on "teaching physics with Python" was presented to the profesors who will work with me. They were very excited about Python as an alternative language to introduce physics students to programming. This will be done at the Central University of Venezuela. The profesors working with me didn't know anything about Python, but they were very interested in this language as an alternative to C, language that is being used at the introductory course to programming for undergraduate physics students. My undergraduate work has to be done having a pedagogical aproach to physics. The structure of the work I presented is the following: ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTIONS - Problem definition (What are alternative conceptions in science, how do they affect physiscs teaching) - Alternative conceptions and Constructivism (Alternative conceptions viewed from a pedagogical theory point of view) - Proposed solutions (solutions proposed to deal with the alternative conceptions problem) OUR PROPOSITION - Computer programming and physics teaching (How can computer programing help dealing with alternative conception in physics teaching) - Python as a programming language (What is Phython) - ¿Why Phython? (Features that make phython an ideal language for physics teaching) - Design of a programming course for undergraduate physics students. I will appreciate your comments. I'm beginning to work on every subject of this table of contents.

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Re: [Edu-sig] Python promises a revolution
by Kirby Urner Feb. 20, 2003

Feb. 20, 2003

At 02:00 AM 2/20/2003 +0000, you wrote: >I did a Masters dissertation on the last two of these points last year in >the department >of physics at the University of Oxford here in the UK. You may find the >dissertation >and the teaching materials I produced useful: > >http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sann1276/python/ >-- >Michael I notice you avoid exposing students to the concept of a class, i.e. the OOP paradigm is put off in favor of a more procedural approach. Is this because you think user-defined classes (types) are too difficult for beginning students, or perhaps simply that they're less relevant to programming applications in physics? Or maybe I missed seeing it in your well-organized and clearly presented tutorial (above). Kirby

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progress
by Arthur Feb. 19, 2003

Feb. 19, 2003

Just to report some progress and peacemaking on one front, at least. Bruce Sherwood on the vpython-users list. >I enjoyed working/playing today with the distutils package Arthur so >helpfully provided. This was on Windows, making and testing binary >installers, with and without IDLE, etc. Very nice, very convenient. Even >does a perfect job of cleaning up on an uninstall from the "Add/remove >program" control panel. He is actually being quite reasonable in talking about substantial rethinking of the VPython distribution, and to a more "community" based approach to the future of VPython in general. Certainly the fact that I was able to bring something concrete to the table with a worked out setup.py was a major help. Art Art

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Re:[Edu-sig] A mathematical teaser ...
by Christian Mascher Feb. 18, 2003

Feb. 18, 2003

> From: Gregor Lingl <glingl(a)aon.at> > > > What strategy would you recommend, to solve the problem stated below? > (For those of you who also read the tutor-list, please notice, that - > although > I posted this same problem there also - my *question* here is > (intentionally) > different). Hi, thanks for the interesting problem. How does one get started on a way to a solution? This is what I did (without a computer, but perhaps with some programming experience involved): [In case you want to do it youself: don't read on.] (no-spoiler space) a) visualize, find a short representation: The state of the lock can be represented by four binary digits in an 2-2-array like this: 0 0 or 1 0 1 1 1 1 b) classify: I wrote down all possible combinations for a locked state. These can be grouped into three classes: type 1: array contains only a single 0 or only a single 1 type 2p: array contains two parallel 0 and two parallel 1 like in 00 11 type 2d: array contains two diagonal 0 and 1 like in 01 10 I made the distinction between 2p and 2d later, when I realized how the operations work on these types. At first I started with just two classes/types. Type 1 came quite naturally, because 0 and 1 can be interchanged without changing the problem. c) analyse the operations on the types: How do the four different operations P1,P2,D1 and D2 change the type. By looking at the visual arrays, one sees that D2 is quite special: If D2 works on type 2d, the lock opens. If it works on type 1 or 2p, it leaves them in their respective class. Now its quite clear how to get a solution. The last bit was working out a graph - a sort of seaving procedure - where you start with any state, then use D2, coming to type 1 or 2p (when you haven't opend the lock already), use P2 to go to type 1 or 2d and so on. Symbolically: 1,2p,2d -->D2--> 1,2p -->P2--> 1,2d -->D2--> 1 -->(D1 or P1)-->2p,2d -->D2--> 2p -->P2--> 2d -->D2--> open. I think this is the shortest path, but haven't proven it rigorously. Greetings, Christian > > Thanks for letting me know your ideas > Gregor > > The problem is taken from "Spektrum der Wissenschaft", Feb. 2003 (which > is the German edition of Scientific American): > > Coded entry > > To cut costs for a doorguard who asks silly mathematical riddles, the union > of mathematical logicians has devised a sophisticated locking apparatus for > their union's home. > The lock of the door is controlled by four simple switches, which are > arranged in a square. The door opens if all the switches are "on" or if all > of them are "off". When a member arrives to enter, the door always is > locked, which means that some switches are in the on position and some are > off. > No one who wants to enter can see the switches or touch them directly. > Instead, there are four buttons on the door, labelled "P", "D", "1" and > "2". > If you press "P", a pair of two switches in a horizontal or vertical row is > randomly selected. If you press "D" a pair of diagonally arranged switches > is randomly selected. > After this selection has taken place, pushing button "1" randomly selects > one of the previously selected switches and changes its position. > Contrary to that, > pushing "2" switches both of them. The sequence "letter, digit" may be > repeated until the door opens (or you lose patience). > Find the shortest complete code which opens the door with certainty, > regardless of the original position of the four switches. >

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