[Edu-sig] False alarms?

Thu Jul 12 13:00:03 EDT 2018

True, but scipy and maxima are built into SAGE.

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On Jul 12, 2018, 12:18 PM, at 12:18 PM, Sergio Rojas <sergio_r at mail.com> wrote:
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>Hola Jorge, 
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>Thanks for pointing out your blog, Jorge. 
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>I have explored Sage as a much madure open source alternative 
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>to Mathematica than Sympy (the other one I like is Maxima). It 
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>is really great as you have shown in your blog for calculus in several 
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>variables. 
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>An issue for me, though, is that it is an stand alone system and
>apparently it is not callable 
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>from a Python session (I have found no way of doing so as we can do 
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>with SymPy). Like that it is like using Maxima on its own. 
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>Salut, 
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>Sergio 
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>a python session 
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>Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2018 at 9:59 AM 
>From: "A Jorge Garcia" <calcpage at aol.com> 
>To: "kirby urner" <kirby.urner at gmail.com> 
>Cc: "Sergio Rojas" <sergio_r at mail.com>, "A Jorge Garcia via Edu-sig"
><edu-sig at python.org> 
>Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] False alarms? 
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>FYI, I dumped Graphing Calculators completely in my Multivariable
>Calculus class that I'm teaching right now during summer session at the
>local community college. 
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>I'm using SageCell, have a look, http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com and
>http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009 
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>HTH, 
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>AJG 
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>Sent from BlueMail 
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>On Jul 10, 2018, at 9:40 AM, kirby urner < kirby.urner at gmail.com>
>wrote: 
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>Hi Sergio -- 
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>Per this article, with so many states and no national curriculum (I
>don't advocate for one), it's tough to generalize about US schools: 
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>https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/07/americas-schools/564413/
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>Now, to generalize :-D 
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>The mathematics classroom was rarely also a computer lab.  If the
>school has a computer lab, that's usually a separate facility and they
>learn business applications and typing, rarely much programming, until
>rather recently. 
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>Today, schools likely have Chromebooks in large charging cabinets on
>rollers.  Fewer schools give out Chromebooks to each student but that's
>the trend, perhaps from 6th or 7th grade up. 
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>The mathematics curriculum has never integrated any programming as
>there's still that sense that programming takes years to learn and
>would be a huge detour.  Those of us more familiar with the state of
>the art don't see it that way. 
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>You're right that Mathematica paved the way for a small subculture and
>I-Python, Sage, Jupyter Notebooks, SymPy do feature in some US schools,
>but very few. 
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>Rather than integrate mathematics and learning to code, the strong
>belief is we need to keep math and computer science separated, which
>means teaching a lot of things twice, given the Venn Diagram shows
>large overlap. 
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>Your book, which I've been reading, takes the more integrated approach
>that I favor. 
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>Math teachers are in a tough position I think, as a lot of the mathy
>content that students find most attractive is being placed in another
>subject area. 
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>I have my opinions about all this, as a former high school math teacher
>turned applications programmer and teacher-trainer. 
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>https://medium.com/@kirbyurner/the-plight-of-high-school-math-teachers-c0faf0a6efe6
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>Finding a lot of computer science teachers in a hurry is the name of
>the game right now, and lots of educators are selling on ramp teacher
>training programs.  That's becoming a big business.  
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>I expect many with a math teaching background are currently migrating
>to computer science, so in some sense my desire for better integration
>is being fulfilled.  Some of this on ramp programs teach a language
>called Pyret, which we're told is the better way to go. 
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>Kirby 
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>On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 5:13 AM, Sergio Rojas <sergio_r at mail.com>
>wrote: 
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>>  here's a blog post raising the alarm 
>> that Python (among others) is "completely incompatible with
>mathematics". 
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>> 
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>https://blogs.ams.org/matheducation/2017/01/09/integrating-computer-science-in-math-the-potential-is-great-but-so-are-the-risks/
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>I get lost reading the referred blog post. I was 
>under the impression that the ideas presented in the 
>post were already fully discussed back in the 90's, 
>when Mathematica was getting its way into the 
>classroom at US schools. That things like "x = x + x" 
>were already familiar to teachers. 
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>In fact, I was thinking of an open source alternative to Mathematica 
>when writing the book on Prealgebra via Python Programming 
>( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325473565), with the 
>advantage that Python can be used for intensive computing task as 
>well as for symbolic (algebraic) computations (like mathematica) 
>via SymPy. 
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>I was under the idea that the Mathematica team has already shaped and 
>polished the road. I can see that I was wrong. It is still very, very 
>rough (much more than the first draft of my book). 
>
>Sergio 
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