Very typical routine Math Forum sharing of my Pythonic Mathematics: http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=4780241
No Arthur in center ring yet. I invited him to join me in the big time tent, having already proved his irascibility and street cred as a tough-minded New Yorker here on edu-sig. I think one reason my Pythonic mathematics approach may not be more popular in the Python community is it requires no changes to Python, no improvements of exactly the kind edu-siggers are into, if they've gone so far to dive head first into Python. Like *of course* we need improvements. However, where I'm starting is with over-thick antediluvian K12 and community college math texts, and TI calculators. I'm in the sewer in other words, dealing with the stench of dead culture, static for decades, toxic to most kids (the docile ones gravitate to cube farms, a kind of Matrix for them, while another generation of zombie teacher gets certified to continue the forced-march sleep walk towards oblivion (good scifi spin, no?)). With Python in the picture, there's no way to go but up (towards higher quality) and it's a long time before we hit the kind of ceiling the pydev types might care about. Just saying "let's talk about mathematics as an extensible type system" after deriving Monkey, Dog and Human from a common Mammal class, is a real eye-opener for them, and it only takes a few minutes, especially with the high quality cartoons. So there's really no contest. Pythonic math is better. And there's plenty of it on the web ready to go. Any enterprising teacher with Internet access is on a launchpad already. So that's really the problem: there's nothing left to brainstorm (I'm kidding, but it can feel that way some days). The ducks are already all in a row, in some static lineup. So it's just the boring implementation part that's slow and unfinished (runtime), waiting for more so-called mathematics teachers to care about computers, let alone programming, let alone some language that sounds like it might bite. Sigh. Twiddling thumbs. Doing nothing. Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
