I got myself invited to talk to a grade 7 math class at my kids' school. I was given 20 minutes. The following is a record of the session of my talk, with my comments added afterwards.
2 + 3 5 2 - 3 _1 2 * 3 6 2 % 3 0.666667 2 % 5 0.4 NB. I was told that the talk I had was "too advanced", so my goal NB. was to get across one main simple idea, the following one. 2 3 4 + 8 1 7 10 4 11 NB. a student thought that 2 3 4 was 234, and gave 1052 NB. as the expected answer. 234 + 817 1051 2 3 4 - 8 1 7 _6 2 _3 2 3 4 * 8 1 7 16 3 28 NB. Some students seem quite smart, so I slipped in "insert". +/ 2 3 4 9 */ 2 3 4 24 2+3+4 9 NB. a student asked about order of operations 2 + 4 * 3 14 2 * 4 + 3 14 (2 * 4) + 3 11 NB. I wanted to tell them the story of Gauss as a schoolboy NB. summing the numbers from 1 to 100 in no time flat. +/ 1 2 3 4 5 15 1 2 3 4 5 + 5 4 3 2 1 6 6 6 6 6 5 * 6 % 2 15 100 * 101 % 2 5050 1 2 3 4 ... + 100 99 98 ... |spelling error | 1 2 3 4 ... + 100 99 98 ... | ^ NB. a student asked about exponentiation 2 ^ 3 8 4 ^ 3 64 2 4 ^ 3 2 8 16 2 ^ 123 1.06338e37 NB. A student ask where he can get the software. Another asked "PC or Mac?" At the end, the teacher suggested I go talk to the high school (8-12) classes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
