[Edu-sig] re: Does any such tutorial exist?
Kirby Urner
urnerk@qwest.net
Sun, 09 Feb 2003 13:15:08 -0800
At 02:39 PM 2/9/2003 -0500, Arthur wrote:
> >I like historical context.
>
>Like, for instance, Euclid, when looking at geometry? ;)
I have no problem with Euclid. But geometry didn't stop (nor start)
with him.
On other lists, I pound the table about the importance of Euclid's
Algorithm (that's what it's called, but it likely predates him).
There's a geometric interpretation, but it's mainly about finding
the gcd of two numbers. Guido shows how compact Python can be by
giving us:
def gcd(a,b):
while b:
a,b = b,a%b
return a
Not all that's Euclid (or Euclid + Python) is geometry.
>I do go on ... relentlessly.
>
>Art
I think our experiential world is not flat, but spatial. So I
advocate starting in space and moving to the plane in special
case. Plane geometry is a subspecies of spatial geometry, not
vice versa. Either way, we get to do constructions. Either
way, it's heavily influenced by Greek thinking (and terminology).
Kirby
PS: in PyCrust, I can't seem to cut from my emails and paste
to the prompt (e.g. the above function, which I first wrote
here, then cut and pasted in IDLE to test). Is there a way?