At 10:29 PM 9/12/2008 -0700, michel paul wrote: >The first homework assignment in my math classes this year was to download and >install Python. I've been using it most extensively in my FST (Functions >Statistics Trig) class.
Sounds like the same class I took as a high school Junior in 1963. It was all pretty new at the time, right after a major revision in the curriculum. We need another Sputnik!!! >After class I asked the kid if what we were doing made any sense, and he was >beaming. He said yes, and he couldn't wait to get home to download Python. >That was very encouraging. I remember laboriously making a plot of sin(x) on a large sheet of graph paper, using values from tables in a big book. This wasn't an assignment. I just enjoyed doing it. I remember thinking - where do sine waves come from? Do generators really make sine waves? Seems like parabolas would be simpler. If only I could have applied that energy and enthusiasm to learning the fundamentals of computing ... Instead my introduction to computing a few years later was truly awful. It wasn't considered a subject worthy of study at Caltech. Now after a long career in engineering, I'm learning some basic computer science by helping with classes at U of A. >What I want the kids and colleagues and administration to understand is that >this is not something on top of the algebra, this IS algebra! It's algebra >that RUNS. It's 21st century algebra. I like your presentation of list comprehensions as set notation. It helped me see the utility of the syntax, and appreciate its compactness. I was thinking of list comprehensions as just another twist I had to learn to read other people's programs. Now when I see one, I don't have to parse it in my mind to understand it, and I use them all the time. This also seems like a good way to squeeze some computing into an otherwise orthodox curriculum. It's just a tool for doing algebra, not a frontal assault on the status quo. If Python gets a foothold at U of A, it will likely be just a tool to do some simulations in an advanced networking class. Learning Python is easier than learning OPNET. Oh, and by the way, it's not just a network simulation language. It's useful in just about everything you will do involving computation! Keep up the good work! _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
