[Edu-sig] OO and story problems

[kirby urner]

I've been haunting the math-teach list, as usual,
suggesting we take a page from AP computer
science and build our math around an interlinked,
themed, consistent set of story problems -- rather
than making these "meaningless" (deliberately).

The opponents in this debate bring up the specter
of political manipulation, propaganda, tainted "pure
math" with someone's good ideas about applications.

My approach to math teaching, as readers here
know (some of 'em), is to bake OO into the matrix
pretty early, meaning the idea of "math objects"
(vectors, polyhedrons, rational numbers) connects
to our Pythonic notion of types.

Here's some background reading for any wanting
to sample the more detailed nuances of this thread
(on-going, and for over a decade for sure).

http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2289577&tstart=0

(most posters long time veterans of this list, with
carved out positions)

I also take it a step further in that the story problems
under consideration often have a strong "off your
duff" component, in that your mathematical reasoning
translates into physical expenditure of energy.

Yes, sounds a lot like summer camp (the "self
quantification movement" also syncs up).

http://fastwonderblog.com/2011/07/30/crunching-the-numbers-open-source-community-metrics-at-oscon/
http://hashtags.foxepractice.com/healthcare-hashtag-analytics.php?hashtag=QuantifiedSelf
http://www.4dsolutions.net/presentations/urnermindstorm.pdf

Kirby