[Edu-sig] re: Does any such tutorial exist?

[Kirby Urner]

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?