Mailman 3 January 2010 - Edu-sig

no public link to a BoF Wiki
by Andrew Harrington 24 Jan '10

24 Jan '10

Am I missing something? I remember always at least having a link on the Open Space page to a BoF *wiki* page that is freely editable so a public link can be made to new individual Bof's like edu-sig. The instructions mention you can make a wiki page, but not on a page that is publicly modifiable, and there is no suggestion how to link your new page to anything public. I created a http://us.pycon.org/2010/openspace/edu-sig/ starting the same sort of information we had last year, though I am not local to make a dinner reservation. Has someone done something like this with a different invisible name earlier? -- Andrew N. Harrington Director of Academic Programs Computer Science Department Loyola University Chicago 512B Lewis Towers (office) Snail mail to Lewis Towers 416 820 North Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60611 http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh Phone: 312-915-7982 Fax: 312-915-7998 gpd(a)cs.luc.edu for graduate administration upd(a)cs.luc.edu for undergrad administration aharrin(a)luc.edu as professor

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parked lesson plans
by kirby urner 17 Jan '10

17 Jan '10

Greetings edu-sig peers. Kirby from Portland, Oregon (MLK Weedend, 2010) FYI here's me posting in a recent thread, Philippines user group: http://groups.google.com/group/pinoy-python-users/browse_thread/thread/ad51… Parking some pointers, recycling some good stuff: <pointers> <lesson> Pythonic Math Lesson Plan: Simple Groups A simple and gentle introduction to group theory, well trammeled in the literature, uses modulo arithmetic on tiny finite sets. Python's operator overloading puts adding modulo N within reach of any snake wrangler. Concepts: GCD, totatives, relatively prime http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RelativelyPrime.html </lesson> <lesson> Pythonic Math Lesson Plan: A Game of Life Creatures move around a virtual chess board according to various rules. A time loop keeps computing successive frames. http://4dsolutions.net/ocn/python/jungle.py </lesson> <lesson> Pythonic Math Lesson Plan: T-Mod with a Turtle Trace the plane net for 1/120th of a Rhombic Triacontahedron. Use the Standard Library turtle module, print to paper, cut and fold, 60 left handed, 60 right handed. Example implementation: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2009-December/009683.html Related lessons: trace A, B modules, same volume as T modules </lesson> </pointers>

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Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig page advice to teachers
by Andre Roberge 14 Jan '10

14 Jan '10

Hi everyone, I have added links to Charles Severance's book and to Fotis Georgatos's MSc thesis on the edu-sig page. I have also tried to take into account the following comment (and ensuing discussion): On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 9:18 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Current verbiage: > > """ > As a result of the changes, programs written for Python 2 are likely > to be incompatible with Python 3 (and vice-versa). Since both versions > are going to co-exist for a while, a choice has to be made as to which > one to use. As a very subjective opinion, we would like to offer the > following: > > * Consider the possibility of teaching both Python 2 and 3. If you > are teaching beginners, the only significant differences are the print > statement/function and the integer division [and possibly the > input()/raw_input() changes...] which you can point out as you go > along. Of course, you will have to decide on a common version to > install for everyone to use; to decide which one, or if you really > want to focus on teaching only one version, we suggest that you > consider the other two alternatives. > * Teach Python 3 if you only plan to teach Python as an > introductory language (say in a CS-1 course), making use only of > modules included in the standard distribution. Alternatively, if you > teach Python in languages other than English, where non-ascii > characters could be put to good use in writing identifiers, then > Python 3 should definitely be your choice. > * Teach Python 2 if you think you might be using third-party > modules not included in the standard Python distribution, or if you > are not familiar with Python. You may want to consider teaching Python > using the older version (2.6 is the most current release) until more > third-party modules have been ported to the new Python version, and > more tutorials for the new version are available. > """ > > I'm wondering if this should be fine tuned to more explicitly > encourage 2.6 and above if doing Python 2 (because of > 3rd party dependencies), 3.x in all other cases. > > > [snip] Ok, here's the revised version (please feel free to suggest changes): As a result of the changes, programs written for Python 2 are likely to be incompatible with Python 3 (and vice-versa). Some of you may have not control over which Python version is made available to the students. If that is the case, you should not despair too much if you and your students do not have access to the best/latest version of Python: Python is a fantastic choice as a first language and the relatively minor changes between versions do not change this fact. *If* you have some control over which version of Python is made available to the students, then you have a choice to make. In this case, and as a *very subjective opinion*, we would like to offer the following: - Use Python 2, and more specifically version 2.6, if you think you might be using third-party modules not included in the standard Python distribution, or if you are not familiar with Python (in which case you may not yet realise that you might need some third-party modules.) - Use Python 3, and more specifically version 3.1, if you only plan to teach Python as an introductory language (say in a CS-1 course), making use *only* of modules included in the standard distribution. Alternatively, if you teach Python in languages other than English, where non-ascii characters could be put to good use in writing identifiers, then Python 3 should definitely be your choice. - Consider the possibility of teaching both Python 2 and 3. If you are teaching beginners, the only significant differences are the print statement/function, the integer division and possibly the input()/raw_input() changes... which you can point out as you go along. Of course, you will have to decide on a common version to install for everyone to use. > > An appropriate topic for discussion though. What 3rd > party libraries would break? wxPython is one of them. Since rur-ple uses it, I am keenly aware of that one. I understand that BeautifulSoup for Python 3.1 is (currently) not as "beautiful" (read: forgiving for poorly formed html) as the version available for Python 2.x. For those that would introduce Python in a math/natural science context, I believe that numpy has not been ported yet. etc.... Cheers, André I'm big into VPython, so right > off the bat I'm facing such issues. Anyone else using that > or am I the only one? > > Kirby > > -- > >>> from mars import math > http://www.wikieducator.org/Digital_Math > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig(a)python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig >

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more technical writing re Pythonic math
by kirby urner 14 Jan '10

14 Jan '10

Some notes on: Mathematics for the Digital Age and Programming in Python, 2nd Edition by Maria Litvin and Gary Litvin === I just got my evaluation copy of the 2nd edition and I've been plowing through it eagerly. For those just joining, I've been somewhat zealously proposing we converge math and computer topics more successfully -- including pre-college. I've been internationally outspoken on this per 4dsolutions.net/presentations Now we finally have a slim, yet action-packed volume that's a pretty good proof of concept I think, plus it comes with a small test demographic @ Phillips / Andover, a world class school. I'll just enumerate some of features I've been hoping for, and am finding in this book: 0) a Rational number class w/ operator overloading 1) graphs (as in networks) relating to polyhedra 2) ASCII -> Unicode 3) a Madlib example 4) triangular numbers, link to OEIS ** 5) polynomials 6) fibonacci numbers, phi 7) RSA (public key crypto) Lots more is included of course, including a rather deep foray into computer hardware and low level language (8088 assembler), boolean truth tables, strategy games, matrix multiplication (exercise pg. 249). ** On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences This text is like a kernel or seed in that it plants all the "right stuff" for a larger tree of topics, branching off from the many covered. As a teacher, you're at liberty to expand coverage in any number of directions. Just to take one example: <technical> Let's go from triangular and square numbers, ala 'Gnomon' by Midhat Gazale, to polyhedral numbers ala 'The Book of Numbers' by Conway and Guy. The number sequence 1, 12, 42, 92, 162... is especially worthy (including of Python generator treatment). Type that into OEIS and we get the cuboctahedral numbers, aka icosahedral numbers: http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/A005901 That these polyhedra go together is deep chemistry (literally), plus you'll find segues to architecture and virology. Scroll down to the links section and you'll find one to my site: K. Urner, Microarchitecture of the Virus Grunch.net/synergetics/virus.html See also: 4dsolutions.net/ocn/numeracy0.html (includes animated GIF showing the ball packing in question: http://4dsolutions.net/ocn/graphics/cubanim.gif ) The Python generator might be: def cubocta(): layer, total = 1, 1 n = 0 while True: yield (layer, total) n += 1 layer = 10 * n * n + 2 total += layer Where "layer" will be 1, 12, 42, 92... and "total" will be a running accumulation of that total number of balls packed out from a nucleus, 1, 13, 55, 147... See also: wikieducator.org/PYTHON_TUTORIALS#Generators (crystal ball sequence) </technical> <lore> When new x-ray diffraction techniques were disclosing the icosahedral shape of the virus, scientists contacted Buckminster Fuller, because he was Mr. Icosahedron in those days (the geodesic dome guy). He had this formula for 1, 12, 42, 92..., a mathematical result H.S.M. "King of Infinite Space" Coxeter thought was pretty brilliant (simple, elementary, easy to prove). "Coxeter told Fuller how impressed he was with his formula -- on the cubic close-packing of balls. And he later took pleasure in proving it, noting in his diary one day in September 1970: "I saw how to prove Bucky Fuller's formula," and publishing it in a paper, "Polyhedral Numbers." Of course more than anything, Coxeter fell in love with Fuller's geodesic domes." [from: Siobhan Roberts, King of Infinite Space (recent bio of H.S.M. Coxeter, to whom Fuller dedicated his magnum opus -- w/ permission -- citing pg. 71 of 'Regular Polytopes' deeper into his text) ] < technical > Here's my own proof, dunno how similar, and kinda dense (f is the number of intervals along an edge, so one less than the number of balls). http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2007/01/gnu-math-memo.html </technical> Fuller's formula was published in the NY Herald Tribune in connection with a virology conference @ Cold Spring Harbor, but then a follow-up Scientific American article on the same topic dropped all mention of Fuller, ostensibly because Coxeter and others had by this time generalized the viral micro-architecture using the related mathematical work of Michael Goldberg. I know Fuller was distraught about being cut out of the narrative (I saw some of the archived correspondence), though he had his posthumous comeuppance I suppose, w/ the discovery of "buckminsterfullerene" (also icosahedral, in the sense of five-fold rotationally symmetric). "They show the same kind of structure as the domes of Buckminster Fuller" Dr. [Robert] Horne, who took the first photos, explained, "We went along working out the mathematics of the viruses when somebody told us about Fuller's book . . . We opened it and there it was all worked out. It seems that both Fuller and nature have picked out the most rigid geometry they can find." "Virus - A Triumph and a Photograph" New York Herald Tribune. February 6, 1962. (cited in B.G. DeVarco, Invisible Architecture: The Nanoworld of Buckminster Fuller, 1997) </lore> Per my workshop @ Pycon / Chicago, I go with these two axes: technical content vs. lore. A curve of finite / constant bandwidth, like the opportunity cost curve in economics, suggests we need to vary the mix, going more for the lore in some contexts. Dry-as-bones technical stuff is just as necessary though, so we oscillate, go back and forth. Kirby

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Edu-sig page advice to teachers
by Edward Cherlin 13 Jan '10

13 Jan '10

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 18:12, kirby urner <kirby.urner(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Vern Ceder <vceder(a)canterburyschool.org> wrote: >> Of course the main thing that would break would be existing lessons and >> instructional handouts... >> >> Cheers, >> Vern >> > > Yes, but that's always happening in our fast-moving > technological world. Always gotta redo those handouts. > A teacher's work is never done (think job security). How about assigning the handout updates as homework to the class above where students are supposed to know both versions? I'm in favor of giving students homework with real-world results, not just do, mark, throw away makework. > Kirby > >> -- >> This time for sure! >> -Bullwinkle J. Moose >> ----------------------------- >> Vern Ceder, Director of Technology >> Canterbury School, 3210 Smith Road, Ft Wayne, IN 46804 >> vceder(a)canterburyschool.org; 260-436-0746; FAX: 260-436-5137 > > -- >>>> from mars import math > http://www.wikieducator.org/Digital_Math > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig(a)python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig -- 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://www.earthtreasury.org/

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Re: [Edu-sig] Edu-sig page advice to teachers
by kirby urner 13 Jan '10

13 Jan '10

[ thread moved to edu-sig ] > On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 4:37 AM, Maria Droujkova <droujkova(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> Some of my kids are about to start using Python for our Physics and >> Modeling, up from Scratch. I am scared to death and still have not selected >> a version for them. All of them run Windows and Mac OS. >> >> Cheers, >> Maria Droujkova >> http://www.naturalmath.com >> >> Make math your own, to make your own math. >> > > Hi Maria -- > > I am wondering what Physics and Modeling is like. From a programming > point of view, I imagine a clock or time increment is usually > involved, which means a loop of some kind. As time ticks by, this or > that happens to objects. > > Here's a somewhat generic way of thinking about "objects in time": > > http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/alien.html (meant to be user-friendly > and conversational, against the backdrop of ongoing arguments on a > math teacher list -- I think you know the one). > > As to which version of Python, a lot depends on if students want to > use something extra besides bare Python. If not, then 3.1 and above. > > Your students seem rather young in this picture, if just moving from Scratch? > > It would be interesting to get some more details if you have the time > to spare. And fear not, you will find much that is fun and rewarding > in this next chapter. > > Kirby > > PS: I notice Carl Trachte is beginning to explore the new format > specifiers in his first two blog posts of 2010: > http://pyright.blogspot.com/ > > Note that in 2.6 one has the ability to go: from __future__ import > print_function > > Plus it runs everything 2.5 and below. That's why I suggest the > edu-sig web page make 2.6 something like the earliest Python you'd > want to use for educational purposes. That'd be generic advice > suitable for Python.org web site. Of course teachers on the front > lines will have their own reasons for doing what they do. > >> >> >>> >>> The scenario I've pushed (sometimes practice): >>> spatial geometry in a Python-endowed math class, is >>> still esoteric, avant-garde. Not sure anyone is doing >>> it. >>> >> >

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Edu-sig page advice to teachers
by kirby urner 11 Jan '10

11 Jan '10

Current verbiage: """ As a result of the changes, programs written for Python 2 are likely to be incompatible with Python 3 (and vice-versa). Since both versions are going to co-exist for a while, a choice has to be made as to which one to use. As a very subjective opinion, we would like to offer the following: * Consider the possibility of teaching both Python 2 and 3. If you are teaching beginners, the only significant differences are the print statement/function and the integer division [and possibly the input()/raw_input() changes...] which you can point out as you go along. Of course, you will have to decide on a common version to install for everyone to use; to decide which one, or if you really want to focus on teaching only one version, we suggest that you consider the other two alternatives. * Teach Python 3 if you only plan to teach Python as an introductory language (say in a CS-1 course), making use only of modules included in the standard distribution. Alternatively, if you teach Python in languages other than English, where non-ascii characters could be put to good use in writing identifiers, then Python 3 should definitely be your choice. * Teach Python 2 if you think you might be using third-party modules not included in the standard Python distribution, or if you are not familiar with Python. You may want to consider teaching Python using the older version (2.6 is the most current release) until more third-party modules have been ported to the new Python version, and more tutorials for the new version are available. """ I'm wondering if this should be fine tuned to more explicitly encourage 2.6 and above if doing Python 2 (because of 3rd party dependencies), 3.x in all other cases. Why? Because in 2.6 (and 2.7) we've got the new core Python format specifiers (PEP 3101) plus have the potential to import the Python 3.x print function from __future__. Of course it's up to individual teachers to make their own determination. The edu-sig page is not about dictating anything, simply making recommendations. However, shouldn't the bias be to encourage using 3.x? Lots of tutorials out there by this time. 3.x also tends to return iterators in a lot of places where 2.x returned a list, e.g. in the case of zip, range etc. -- lots of subtle differences that are quite pervasive nonetheless. If you are "not familiar with Python" (bullet point 3), then isn't 3.x is your better bet? It's easier to think of strings as just unicode codepoints (u-this and u-that) with their byte encodings a separate data type. Having students get it about unicode is pretty important in this day and age, no? Anyway, just ruminating. People get their advice from a million sources. An appropriate topic for discussion though. What 3rd party libraries would break? I'm big into VPython, so right off the bat I'm facing such issues. Anyone else using that or am I the only one? Kirby -- >>> from mars import math http://www.wikieducator.org/Digital_Math

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Remixed Book: Python For Informatics - Exploring Information
by csev 09 Jan '10

09 Jan '10

Hello all, I just wanted to let you know about a "new" book called "Python for Informatics - Exploring Information" and get it added to the edu-sig page. The book is a remixed version of the excellent "Think Python - How to Think like a Computer Scientist" book written by Allen B. Downey, Jeff Elkner, and others. "Python for Informatics" has a goal of making programming in Python accessible to all students - not just those intent on pursuing a career in Computer Science. As such the book focuses less on algorithms and numerical examples and much more on looking at data and information. This is part of my overall interest in the notion of "Informatics" (informatics.umich.edu) - which is a re-visioning of how technology fits folks who are pursuing non-technology careers. I am using the book in my "Technology Literacy" course at the University of Michigan (SI502) and expect to expand the book from 10 to 18 chapters over the next few months. Allen has graciously given me permission to change the copyright license in the book from the GFDL license to Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike which is a more modern version of copyleft for written works (Wikipedia switched from GFDL to CC-BY-SA a while back). Here are a few pages: Python for Informatics: http://www.py4inf.com/ Blog Post - First Printing: http://www.dr-chuck.com/csev-blog/000690.html Think Python: http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/ I welcome any and all comments on the book or the approach. Dr. Charles Severance University of Michigan School of Information www.dr-chuck.com

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CS teaching approaches
by Andy Judkis 07 Jan '10

07 Jan '10

Two feet of snow on the ground, a good time to respond . . . I teach high school kids, but I really think that most of what I teach should have been covered in middle school. I'd recommend: 1) Having the kids open up computers and taking a good long look at the stuff inside. Talk about what's in a chip, what a printed circuit board looks like,what a bus is. Take it out of the realm of magic, make sure that kids know it's just a machine -- albeit a really really fast one. 2) Talk about the history. Show them some really old computers. Talk about the Analytical Engine. Make sure they know what Moore's Law is. 3) Show them some things about operating systems (the task manager, a DOS command window) and talk about viruses, worms, zombies, botnets, cyberwar. . . stuff like that 4) Make sure they know how binary numbers work, and how sound and images can be encoded. 5) Teach them about the internet -- packets, IP addresses, TCP and IP, routers, DNS -- not in detail, just enough to demystify it a little. (In the very first class I taught, I vividly remember one student sputtering in frustration, "But what IS the internet?") 6) Have them do some simple web pages by writing HTML tags with a text editor. 7) Introduce them to programming. I use Python (starting with RUR-PLE) but for middle school, I'd do Scratch or Alice. 8) Have them research some cool/scary things that are happening with robotics and AI, and have them give presentations to the class. To me, the important thing is to get them to not think of a computer as a magic black box, but instead to get under the hood and think about how things work. (see http://extremities.com/pct/index.php?nxt=intro&sub=guyundercar) The very first thing I have kids do is make up a list of things that they wonder about -- I'm actually rather proud of that particular assignment: http://extremities.com/pct/index.php?nxt=intro&sub=goodquestions Best of luck -- I'm eager to hear what you come up with. Andy Judkis Academy of Allied Health and Science Neptune, NJ

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Rur-ple is no longer dormant!
by Andre Roberge 07 Jan '10

07 Jan '10

Hi everyone, After a long period during which rur-ple was dormant, its development has restarted. For those that don't know about rur-ple, it was originally inspired by Guido van Robot (itself inspired by Richard Pattis' Karel the robot) and was my first Python project. Whereas Guido van Robot (GvR for short) uses a Python-like syntax, rur-ple uses true Python syntax. (In fact, rur-ple user programs are run by python via exec()). Rur-ple's development has moved to a new site ( http://code.google.com/p/rur-ple/) and it has a corresponding new discussion group (http://groups.google.com/group/rur-ple-discuss). Among the changes to note: 1) Whereas before only source files (.zip) were distributed, we now have packages (.exe, .deb, .rpm ... with .dmg planned for the near future) to make installation easier. 2) Lessons have been completely translated from English into German, Turkish, Chinese, and partly translated into Spanish. Other translations are in the works.

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