Thanks Kirby, what a link! I think taking on a project like that with a group of my brightest students would be a great alternative to going through a more traditional curriculum. I have the luxury of working with a club of voluntary membership, so I don't have to "play" by the traditional rules. Guiding them through an extended activity like that would be great for having them think through 1) "what do we need to do next?", and 2) "how can we get Python to do that for us?" Richard ----- Original Message ---- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@gmail.com> To: Richard Guenther <heistooheavy@yahoo.com> Cc: Jay Bloodworth <jbloodworth@sc.rr.com>; "edu-sig@python.org" <edu-sig@python.org> Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 5:37:23 AM Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] a non-rhetorical question Check this out! http://codegolf.com/polynomial-division Kirby On 7/10/07, Richard Guenther <heistooheavy@yahoo.com> wrote:

One thing that always comes up when our math department discusses non-standard algorithms is long division of polynomials. Doesn't seem like any non-standard algorithm is easily applied there.

Changing the focus a little: I've been thinking of the importance of student motivation in learning a programming language. I've always found The Python Challenge to be quite motivating to get me writing code and learning more about Python. I don't know how it could be done, but could a similar approach be used to supplement a middle or high school programming class? Any ideas?

Richard

----- Original Message ---- From: Jay Bloodworth <jbloodworth@sc.rr.com> ....

* (a + b)^2 = a^2 + 2ab + b^2, not a^2 + b^2. Here there is the standard geometric area model for multiplication. Sometimes I present multiplication with the model, sometimes not. It doesn't seem to change the error rate.....

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