From kirby.urner at gmail.com Sun Aug 1 00:31:35 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 15:31:35 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] busy with Martian Math... Message-ID: I'm packaging up some Python for a next course that I'm teaching (a relatively busy summer for me). I've also got the J language in the docket. The computer lab is all state of the art Macs, so we'll see how we fair with IDLE. I've appended some source code I just wrote in the last hour, while watching a geometry show on public TV (math-dimensions.org -- on Portland, Oregon's cable network these days). The source won't run without an additional dependency though, which I call stickworks.py -- features in some of the Showmedo episodes and other places. This module provides simple Vector and Edge classes for working with VPython (another dependency). The course materials I'm developing may be previewed at this URL: http://www.4dsolutions.net/satacad/martianmath/mm0.html (and following) (cover page index.html not yet crafted) (comments welcome). I will conclude with a repost of something I just posted to my little engineering list, headquartered at the so-called Pauling House (Linus Pauling's boyhood home), FYI. Keith was a presenter at OSCON this year, regarding his Server Sky idea (orbiting server farm) while Allen Taylor is the esteemed author of 'SQL for Dummies'. ==== Re: [wwwanderers] Mars aressync orbits OK, thanks to both Keith and yourself for all the discussion. I'd not seen that "fourth power" argument before, but then this literature is fairly alien to me. Back on planet Earth (and Keith's gardening concerns), I was just seeing on public TV about how Salem has yet to permit urban farmers to keep chickens. I'd just assumed that chicken coops were legal throughout the Willamette Valley, silly me. I caught this show while waiting for another public TV show about hyper-dimensional geometry. We were informed that higher dimensional spaces "really exist" base on the analogy that if two dimensional beings can think about three dimensions, then so should we, be able to think about four. As a database guy, my bias is to think of n-tuple addressing as just a fancy way to store/retrieve records, like URLs for storing/retrieving web pages (there's a reason it's called hypertext). Sure, you can come up with fancy analogies to polyhedra, but I'm not sure this "really exists" argument is important to the mathematics. Seems more like mysticism (or even organized religion). In any case, the Martian Math I'm busy concocting has a different meaning of "4D". I thought it was poetic that I was working on my uploads at the same time I was catching this Earthian Math show on public television. Kirby On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 2:07 PM, Allen Taylor wrote: Kirby, The magnetic launcher you are thinking of works because of hyper-fast acceleration. This causes two problems: 1. Any organic matter, such as us would be turned into jelly. 2. High velocity at ground level would cause tremendous heating due to atmospheric friction, even with Mars thin atmosphere. The magnetic launcher makes sense on the Moon, which has a negligible atmosphere, but only for cargo that can stand thousands of g's. The pendulum from Phobos as well as the Lofstrom Loop are viable for Earth to orbit or Mars to orbit because velocity is low at ground level where the atmosphere is densest and because g-forces are relatively moderate. Allen ==== """ by K. Urner for Saturday Academy, Martian Math Summer camp 2010 @ Reed College http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/satacad/martianmath/ """ from stickworks import Qray, Edge, getedges from visual import * def setscene ( ): """set the stage for our little drama""" scene2 = display(title='Drawing a Duo-Tet Cube', fullscreen= True, autoscale = False, background=color.white, scale = vector(0.1, 0.1, 0.1)) return scene2 def ccp( ): """ draw 12 spheres around 1 """ scene = setscene( ) scene.select( ) # 26 points in space (as sums of Qrays) a, b, c, d = Qray((1,0,0,0)), Qray((0,1,0,0)), Qray((0,0,1,0)), Qray((0,0,0,1)) e, f, g, h = -a, -b, -c, d i,j,k,l,m,n = a+b, a+c, a+d, b+c, b+d, c+d o,p,q,r,s,t = i+j, i+k, i+l, i+m, n+j, n+k u,v,w,x,y,z = n+l, n+m, j+l, l+m, m+k, k+j # 12 around... for locus in [o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z]: ball = sphere(pos = locus.xyz, color = color.orange, radius = 0.5) # 1 at the center (nuclear ball) center = sphere(pos = (0,0,0), color = color.red, radius = 0.5) print "OK, done..." return if __name__ == "__main__": ccp( ) From kirby.urner at gmail.com Wed Aug 4 00:13:34 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:13:34 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] class notes (martian math) Message-ID: I recently completed the 2nd day of this summer camp blitz for TAG (talented and gifted) students, a category invented by the district, and I'm not sure how it applies, i.e. this private NGO has no obligation to check a district database for a tag flag or anything, praise Allah. Anyway, all the students are bright, astute, engaged and interested. Programming is hard fun and takes concentration. One is lucky if able to muster it. Takes a safe environment and calories to burn. We're in a campus of the highly privilege where no expense is spared, and every kid has access to a state of the art Apple. I've got a projector and screen. We all have Internet. This is my first time to teach an all-Apple class and I have to confirm Chairman Steve's impressing the IDLE is languishing here. Guido gave Python a tremendous boost, propelled it into high visibility with an interactive Tk shell and editor, but that infrastructure has not kept pace. The scroll bar tends to not work. Resizing windows as they'll get to large to fit the screen, so grabbing the lower right resize control requires changing screen resolution through the Finder control panel. That being said, it's pretty amazing to have such a smooth language co-functioning with VPython, such that we're immediately able to get colorfun.py going, which the students then tweak. I'm using the 'heads first' or 'dive into' approach of supplying plenty of scaffolding, getting the results first, then going back over the syntax and structure of the language with an eye towards making small modifications. We've spent a large percentage of the last few hours tweaking color, learning about what's canned (pre-named) and how to define your own RGB values. Today, using the projector, I introduced the random module, which I think is one of the first to be useful after visual itself. random's randint and choice are two of the most practical. Our code looks like this: from visual import * from random import randint def galaxy( n ): for i in range(n): x = randint(-100, 100) y = randint(-100, 100) z = randint(-100, 100) r = randint(10) sphere( pos = (x, y, z), radius = r, color = color.red ) return Then a next modification, after playing with choice and randint in the shell a little more, and talking about lists, would be: from visual import * from random import randint, choice colors = [ color.red, color.green, color.blue, color.yellow, color.orange ] def galaxy( n ): for i in range(n): x = randint(-100, 100) y = randint(-100, 100) z = randint(-100, 100) r = randint(10) c = choice( colors ) sphere( pos = (x, y, z), radius = r, color = c ) return Once this code is working on each workstation (I go around to help catch syntax errors, usually a missing comma or paren), then students might vary the parameters, add more colors for example. Earlier, when introducing functions more generally, I told the story of the guy who impressed the king for a modest favor, were he successful in a mission (the King put out an RFP and this looked like the lowest bide): put a grain of rice on the first square of the chess board, double it for the next, and the next, and so forth. "Can't be that much rice" thought the King. def reward( ): therice = 0 for x in range(64): therice = therice + 2**x return therice Wow, all the rice in the world and then some, right? Note that 2**0 == 1 and that's what goes on the first square, so we only get up to 2**63 on the last square (with the rice being cumulative). I continue to introduce ( ): in the function def as almost like an emoticon, like two eyes with an open mouth. Turn that mouth sideways to make it look more like a mouth, and remember that's where to put your arguments. This is easy to remember, as people use their mouths for arguing all the time. My students range in age from roughly 14-17. My Photostream has a few pictures from the current venue, mixed in with other topical photos (a Flickr set): http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315 at N00/sets/72157622961425831/ Kirby From jurgis.pralgauskis at gmail.com Tue Aug 17 05:32:46 2010 From: jurgis.pralgauskis at gmail.com (Jurgis Pralgauskis) Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2010 06:32:46 +0300 Subject: [Edu-sig] open source admin in academia? (editorial) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: http://openobject.com/ (openERP) is also a spreading framework, which could be applied in edu, for now there is a goog example for public sector with http://medical.forge.osor.eu/ On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 8:31 AM, Jarrod Millman wrote: > Hello, > > There are several open source, community developed projects > widely-used in higher ed. ?For example, moodle is a widely-used course > management system: > ?http://moodle.com/ > Sakai is another course management system for use in higher ed: > ?http://sakaiproject.org/ > The Jasig consortium provides several applications used in higher ed: > ?http://www.jasig.org/ > > The following, while not specifically focused on higher ed, are also > widely deployed in higher ed environments: > ?http://roundcube.net/ > ?http://squirrelmail.org/ > ?http://www.list.org/ > ?http://www.isc.org/software/bind > > Best, > Jarrod > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig at python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > -- Jurgis Pralgauskis tel: 8-616 77613; Don't worry, be happy and make things better ;) http://kompiuterija.pasimokom.lt From kirby.urner at gmail.com Fri Aug 20 04:46:20 2010 From: kirby.urner at gmail.com (kirby urner) Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 19:46:20 -0700 Subject: [Edu-sig] recent classroom hits... Message-ID: >From my Martian Math curriculum: http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/python/movingballs.py http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/python/movingballs2.py http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/python/movingarrows.py This one is especially likely to crash your VPython, if your video card isn't running the latest something-or-other, read all about it under Visual 5 (vpython.org). I had to upgrade my desktop driver, laptop no problemo, high end Apples in the classroom no problemo either. http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/python/movingletters.py Kirby re Martian Math: http://bfi.org/news-events/community-content/martian-math-and-synergetics From jurgis.pralgauskis at gmail.com Tue Aug 31 16:12:02 2010 From: jurgis.pralgauskis at gmail.com (Jurgis Pralgauskis) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:12:02 +0300 Subject: [Edu-sig] online python tutor Message-ID: very nice app to learn py (online :) http://people.csail.mit.edu/pgbovine/python/ with stepping and value watching ps.: I once was on my way to enable similar functionality to http://code.google.com/p/python-turtle-demo/ (following rur-ple way) it was prealpha -- its still on my todo somewhen... From jurgis.pralgauskis at gmail.com Tue Aug 31 16:49:14 2010 From: jurgis.pralgauskis at gmail.com (Jurgis Pralgauskis) Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:49:14 +0300 Subject: [Edu-sig] room escape games framework with python? (RenPy?) Message-ID: Hello, do you like room escape games? :) I do I stumblend on http://entitycrisis.blogspot.com/2010/08/game-creation-tools.html and especially liked http://www.renpy.org ( based on pygame and more) it is used for visual novels (and is very easy with python instructions with some added syntax), and also has ability to react to mouse click location http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/reference/functions/renpy.imagemap http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/cookbook/Button_Game_Menu thats all what is needed to make room escape games what do you think? would childre get involved in REG making? -- Jurgis