[Edu-sig] new python // and /

[kirby urner]

On 5/26/06, Michael Tobis <mtobis at gmail.com> wrote:
> Kirby, I am confident you are dealing with a different population with
> different interests and skills. Some of my students are taking the
> course because they are math-averse, and Loyola allows the survey of
> computing as a fulfillment of a math requirement in business and
> liberal arts curricula INSTEAD of a conventional math course.
>
> I am much more interested in teaching this crowd abstraction, rigor,
> and orthogonality than exponents and mantissas.  I have already rocked
> their boats trying to explain twos complement. I promise you these
> people do not need to know what a float is and how it differs from a
> mathematical real, that on the whole they are not equipped to
> understand it, and that it would be a bad idea to explain it.

I'm not talking about getting into all the details.  Just tell 'em to
expect some weirdo rounding phenomena, odd last digits and so on,
based on the fact that Python is internally using base two when doing
decimals.  That's all you need to say.

But to eschew using floats for weeks just overdramatizes everything
and makes them averse to using a very basic and important feature of
this computer language.  That does them a disservice.  I use floats
with 8th graders immediately and have never had any problems.

> Generalizing from this, I suspect a big part of what makes teaching
> Python such a quandary is that it is so accessible. (As with many of
> its problems, c.f. "too many web frameworks", this is symptomatic of
> the language's strengths, but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem)
>

The problem with the academics Bernie talks about is no one teaches
them Python.  They're busy professionals and when they open a tutorial
they see a lot of jargon is already assumed (iterator, class,
object...).  These are proud people, very smart, so they're not about
to enroll in my 8th grade class, where all would be made clear.

> There are diverse audiences that might be exposed, and that in turn
> makes a uniform curriculum problematic.
>
> mt

I never said anything about a uniform curriculum.  I do think avoiding
floats because you think using them means explaining a lot of stuff
about mantissas is not a good approach.

However, if these are business students, then definitely get in to the
decimal class, which is designed for use with currencies (money).

Kirby