Mailman 3 October 2009 - Edu-sig

recent curriculum writing (Urner)
by kirby urner Oct. 15, 2009

Oct. 15, 2009

What do we mean by "computer language"? One could answer in terms of using text to control electronics, and that would be accurate. However there's also the goal of a philosophical logic: to express situations in the world, to mirror them for the purposes of simulation. The veteran programmer of the late 1900s experienced a number of twists and turns in the art of computer programming. This field has evolved quickly. Early machines had to be programmed "close to the metal" meaning a deep understanding of hardware internals was needed to even begin to write code. Today's computer languages haven't completely divorced themselves from hardware concerns, but the higher level ones are freer to concentrate on what we sometimes call "knowledge domains" such as cellular automata, molecular biology, zoology, telescopy etc. When talking about human languages, we have something we call grammar. It helps to know the difference between a verb and an adjective, an adjective and a noun. In many of today's computer languages, nouns name objects which have attributes (like adjectives) and behaviors (like verbs). Here's an idea of what computer code might look like: anAnt = Ant() critter = AntEater() critter.color = 'brown' critter.walk(paces=10) critter.eat(anAnt) If you've studied some mathematics, you may be used to reading "=" as "equals". You're free to keep doing that, but add the thought that "=" is an "assignment operator" and what it does is bind a name to an object. In the above segment of code, the Ant and AntEater types are instantiated and assigned to names. These names are then operated upon using "dot notation" such that attributes get set and behaviors such as eating invoked. Notice that we already have a tendency to think in terms of things (a very generic statement). Think of an airport. What "things" do you suppose it would have? Runways and taxiways would define paths for the airplanes. There might be a control tower. Lots of things have come to mind already. A single airplane has many attributes and behaviors. pdx = Airport() nw = Runway() pdx.add(nw) myplane = Gulfstream() myplane.takeoff(nw) myplane.land(nw) We also have an engrained concept of the more general versus the more specific. There's the generic idea of a house, animal, airport. Then we get more specific, getting to some individual instance of example of any of these types of object. A computer language might have this same idea: there's a type of thing called a Number, and then we have individual instances of Number, such as 3, -1 or 2.12 or whatever. Suppose you had a generic blueprint for a robot dog. You could create an instance of this blueprint at any time, and then modify the specifics to give yourself an individual dog. Each "instance" would take up its own place in memory, even though the blueprint is shared among all these instances. Imagine a snake named Selma, maybe a cute cartoon snake. She has a sister named Bella. Creating these two snakes from the Snake template might look like this: selma = Snake() bella = Snake() At this point, all that differentiates these two snakes are their names. Two snake objects have been born, and assigned to names. Now we might modify each snake separately: selma.color = 'red and brown stripes' bella.color = 'various shades of gray' One might eat a mouse, the other might eat a cupcake: selma.eat('mouse') bella.eat('cupcake') Notice our "dot notation" has so far mostly followed these grammatical patterns: noun = Type() noun.adjective = value noun.verb() It maybe help to think of open-close parentheses as a "mouth". Think of emoticons like :-) or :-(). The () is clearly a mouth. A mouth eats or takes in. We call often call the things a mouth eats its "arguments". An event such as noun = Type() is akin to the birth of a creature or instance from its generic type. Then we make our noun do things or define its attributes, with noun.verb(arguments) or noun.adjective = value. Also, we don't just set attributes (store them), but we also get them (retrieve them). What's important to realize about the above quick run through is we've nowhere had to discuss the internals of a computer or how it works. Writing scripts will require naming our actors and defining their behaviors, their interactions. Writing a program is a lot like scripting for theater. We need to know how to express ourselves grammatically in a computer language. But that's the same with ordinary human languages, so this need shouldn't seem too alien or unfamiliar. Now, the grammar suggested above is characteristic of several computer languages, but certainly not all of them. Given we're heading into a study of the Python computer language, all of the above is apropos (relevant). This way of thinking, using dot notation, will also serve you when learning JavaScript, Java, C#, Ruby and several other languages, should you choose to develop your skills in any of these directions.

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help and suggestions
by roberto Oct. 15, 2009

Oct. 15, 2009

Hello, this post is a request of a mix of: your help (one half) your scientific experience (one half) i plan to ground my math teaching experience on an inquiry based approach to learning (i think you know definitely better than me what it is). My first inspiration on this topic came the way back in 1994, when i was a high school student and i came accross to Polya approach to math education. (This is the request for your experience) Is there anyone there who is using it in his/her classroom ? Also, i want to support this way of working with extensive programming activities, mainly based on python and python-grounded tools. (This is the request for help) Now, the point is that tons of materials do exist and i do not know how to choose the most reliable and scientifically supported. Is there anyone who can point me to documents, guidelines or whatever resource which implement this way of teaching/learning math ? I thank you very much, again. -- roberto

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can IDLE editor show line numbers?
by Jurgis Pralgauskis Oct. 8, 2009

Oct. 8, 2009

hello, <subj> would be usefull thing as when I get error it is easier to find the place of course I can use Alt+G, but linenumbers by side would be more intuitive... any ideas, where should I direct this feature request? -- Jurgis Pralgauskis tel: 8-616 77613; Don't worry, be happy and make things better ;) http://kompiuterija.pasimokom.lt

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Elevator Demo for Python
by Phil Wagner Oct. 5, 2009

Oct. 5, 2009

Often I am asked for a quick demonstration about the power of Python, sometimes for people with no computer science background. . What can I show them that doesn't take too much time but gets the point across that Python is a good fit for math/education? Phil

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Crunchy and Sphinx?
by Jeff Elkner Oct. 5, 2009

Oct. 5, 2009

Hi André! I've spent the last month converting python educational materials from lore to sphinx. For the results, see: http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e and http://www.openbookproject.net/pybiblio/gasp/course The only missing feature at this point (sphinx rocks!) is support for crunchy. Any thoughts on that? I didn't see any reference to reStructuredText or Sphinx on the crunchy site. Thanks! jeff elkenr

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poking some dying logs...
by kirby urner Oct. 5, 2009

Oct. 5, 2009

I'd like to make another plug for including this title on the edu-sig home page: http://www.skylit.com/mathandpython.html Ian thought it was too much a hybrid of CS and math, not an elegant amalgamation, though I don't have has remarks in front of me at the moment. Steve was gonna get back to us. Andre thought he might work it onto the page... That was all months ago by now, so it make sense to raise the issue again, as the title does break new ground in some ways, has claim to being a math teaching book, yet uses a computer language (one most of us know). 'Concrete Mathematics' and 'The Art of Computer Programming' are both math books of course, amenable to a "through programming" approach. Jsoftware folks implemented the former in J, whereas the latter is in MMX already. Another hot button issue in Portland these days is whether families have the right to demand a PDF version of any assigned textbook, versus a hardcopy edition. We have lots of tree huggers around here, worried about "green" and unsustainability. To quote one of my colleagues (from her blog): "We need the text book companies to print thousands of copies of new textbooks every year, not so the authors can make money, though they make a little, but so the companies can make money... Do some central planning, and if the government can't do that without going through corporations, then it is time to [do it ourselves]". Anyway, just wanted to re-raise that as well. I mostly do my computer / technical reading on Safari, have no problem with recycling already printed books, have no problem with small press runs. But I can see where truck loads of spanking new 400 page math books, hot off the press, none containing any computer programming to speak of, let alone Mites, Sytes or Kites (honeycomb stuff, important to gnu-bees), would provoke a crisis in conscience for our more ethical. This is the kind of thing 15 year olds talk about. They're suspicious of adults who can't follow their logic (about saving trees), undermines adult authority to not have a response. So do we all favor an "opt out" option for hard copy textbooks? Say aye? Say nay? Kirby

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Slope Art
by Phil Wagner Oct. 5, 2009

Oct. 5, 2009

Here is a protect located for my algebra students involving Python Python I would appreciate your feedback. http://staff.hthcv.hightechhigh.org/~pwagner/Files/Project Files/Slope Art/SlopeArtProject.html<http://staff.hthcv.hightechhigh.org/%7Epwagner/Files/Project%20Files/Slope%…> Phil

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Re: [Edu-sig] Elevator Demo for Python
by Laura Creighton Oct. 5, 2009

Oct. 5, 2009

In a message of Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:58:10 CDT, Phil Wagner writes: >--===============1754152315== >Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=001485f80f0aa9546d0470d25bc >3 > >--001485f80f0aa9546d0470d25bc3 >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > >Often I am asked for a quick demonstration about the power of Python, >sometimes for people with no computer science background. . What can I s >how >them that doesn't take too much time but gets the point across that Pytho >n >is a good fit for math/education? > > Phil list comprehensions are the single thing that 'do it' for people around here. Laura

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Fwd: Geometries, irrationals (was Re: thought re graphing calculators ...)
by kirby urner Oct. 1, 2009

Oct. 1, 2009

From: kirby urner <kirby.urner(a)gmail.com> Date: Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 8:00 PM Subject: Re: Geometries, irrationals (was Re: [Edu-sig] thought re graphing calculators ...) To: Edward Cherlin <echerlin(a)gmail.com> Cc: Gregor Lingl <gregor.lingl(a)aon.at>, edu-sig(a)python.org On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 5:21 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin(a)gmail.com> wrote: << trim >> >> A feature we're looking for is "accessible to grade schoolers" i.e. we >> don't want you already out the other end of some lengthy pipeline >> wherein brainwashing has already occurred. > > Spherical geometry. The trig gets a bit complicated, but even in > kindergarten children can see that an octant of a sphere is a triangle > with three right angles. As long as you don't bring in the big words. > Yes, given our geometry - geography tie-in, with GIS/GPS front and center in a lot of course work, it makes sense to return to the good old days. Joe Clinton, one of the chief geodesic dome guys out of Carbondale, showed me some old high school text books from before the calculus tsunami. Looks like that might be the tough final topic before college. And with Python to help... takes the drudgery out of all that omni-triangulation. Caveats apply though, in that there's nothing especially non-Euclidean about a beach ball, unless you zoom out to show that these "infinite planes" these Euclid folks scribed on, proving their theorems, were only locally flat, took advantage of the relatively small size of humans relative to Planet Earth. Once you start defining infinite planes out of your geometry, then you're actually reality checking creaky old greek metaphysics, which is what I'm suggesting we *should* be doing. There's room for a math without continua. There's room for a math closer to following Karl Menger's suggestion that we just think of points, lines and planes as finite blobs, in a geometry of blobs, no distinction as to dimension, more topological in some ways, as this same blob of dough stretches to become this that or the other (it's a cloud of points though, not a continuum, with no ultimate resolution to anything more primitive (than blobs, always more subdivisible)). It's not like we need to start over from scratch to scrounge together a geometry of this nature, accessible to children. The work is already done, and has many more features and practical applications to boast of, including those geodesic domes I mentioned. http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2009/09/random-posting.html >> I understand that some >> elite schools get into jiggering with the fifth postulate (Euclid's) >> even pre-college, > > That's doing it the hard way. > >> <debate> >> >> Resolved: "Irrational numbers are of course morally superior to the >> rationals as all the best constants (e, phi, pi) are irrational, even >> transcendental if we're lucky." > > I'll see your e, phi, and pi, and raise you 0, 1, -1, and i. > > e^i*pi + 1 = 0 > > Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist Menschenwerk. > > The integers were made by God. All else is the work of man.--Kronecker > Kronecker had a big problem with Cantor throwing in all those monkey wrenches. Whereas people glommed on to Cantor's inventions around infinity, fewer are aware of Cantor's polemics against established dimension concepts. Did Menger comment on Cantor's thinking on this topic? I have no idea. The fact that we have a whole branch with defined fractional dimensions proves this language is tractable (amenable to innovation). What we want students to appreciate is that maths is something of a playground, an amusement park, not some oppressive monolith that weighs on one and drags one under, like some dead albatross around one's neck. Kirby >> Pro, con or stand aside? Come prepared next Tuesday. >> >> </debate> > >>>> Kirby >> >> Or you could say Phi (golden mean) is the Phirst Phractal (certainly >> the recursivity is there in the algebra). >> >> Kirby Urner >> ндсжег воss >> >>> >>> -- >>> Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin >>> Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. >>> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. >>> http://earthtreasury.org/ >>> >> > > > > -- > Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin > Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. > The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. > http://earthtreasury.org/ >

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thought re graphing calculators ...
by Charles Cossé Sept. 30, 2009

Sept. 30, 2009

Hi, this has probably been discussed to death already, but maybe not: The point at which fancy graphing calculators become "necessary" (ie as in one's student career) is the point at which the calculator should be abandoned and Python employed. Just a thought ... delete at will ! -Charles -- AsymptopiaSoftware|Software@theLimit http://www.asymptopia.org

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