A recent thread on recursion math-thinking-l might be of interest.
Many pro computer scientists like to teach about it in tandem with Peano Arithmetic (PA) i.e. mathematical induction. http://mail.geneseo.edu/pipermail/math-thinking-l/2007-January/date.html Of course if the students are already math phobic... But the idea here is a CS approach gives you a second chance to get turned on by what turned you off the first time, i.e. those traditional [I'd say antiquated] high school math classes wherein computer languages are strictly forbidden and/or sidelined without comment. Hope yr feelin' better Dethe. Having the flu sucks. Kirby On 2/9/07, Dethe Elza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Here's my 0.02. Take with a grain of salt, I've been feverish with the flu the last couple of days When the issue comes up, why not step away from the computers and simply draw a stack on the whiteboard? Show how looping stays at the same place in the stack and recursion will eventually overflow the stack. They don't have to understand all the details of why (or why recursion doesn't have that effect in all languages), but a simple picture should give them enough to know why to avoid one over the other. --Dethe "The Brazilian government is definitely pro-law. But if law doesn't fit reality anymore, law has to be changed. That's not a new thing. That's civilisation as usual." --Gilberto Gil, Brazilian Minister of Culture _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
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