[Tutor] Python for Grade 12 Calculus

[Alan Gauld]

On 11/02/16 22:56, Nicholas Tomasic wrote:

> I'm a 12th grade Calculus teacher at a school in Toronto,

I'm from Scotland and so have no idea what that means,
but I take it that they are in high school rather than
at a college/university?

> two of my students. Both are passionate about coding with Python and I'm
> thinking of asking them to produce something that can either a) calculate
> derivatives of simple functions or b) assign 1 student the product rule,
> one the quotient rule, and have them write a program that can tackle
> derivatives in those forms.

Programming is usually better for numerical analysis than doing
formula translations (eg calculus). However there is a library,
SymPy, that is part of the SciPy bundle that allows such things.
If they don't mind downloading SciPy and learning a new package
it might do what you want.

Have a look at this web site for a few ideas of its potential:

http://www.sympy.org/en/features.html

There is a tutorial that might help too:

http://docs.sympy.org/latest/tutorial/index.html#tutorial

HTH
-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
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