On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 10:32 PM, David MacQuigg <macqu...@ece.arizona.edu> wrote: > michel paul wrote: >> >> Recently I've found Sage <http://sagemath.org> invaluable for the purpose >> of getting computational thinking into the math curriculum. I've spent the >> last year figuring out how to harness Sage in class, and it is paying off. >> The difficulty with a pure Python approach has been that it seems so >> foreign to everyone from kids through administrators, it doesn't look like >> anything that gets tested on state standards, and it seems like 'hard work' >> when we already have these nifty hand-helds that graph any function you >> want. However, the power of Sage blows any graphing calculator, even the >> new Inspires, out of the water. Simultaneously, you can program in pure >> bare-bones Python within Sage. So I have found it invaluable to capitalize >> on the power of Sage to serve as a way to introduce into math classes the >> value of the ability to think in pure Python. > > Nice graphics is definitely a key requirement for any tool I would consider > in an introductory course. > > I'm not familiar with Sage, but I wonder if adding a few packages to "pure > Python" would do the same. I'm looking now at NumPy and MatPlotLib in a > proposal for "Introduction to Scientific Computing", currently taught using > C with some addons for plotting. The class is a joint effort between our > Astronomy and Physics departments. > > The advantage of Python/Numpy/MatPlotLib is that what students learn of > Python will be useful beyond just math and science. I think of Sage as just > a replacement for MatLab, not something I would use in programming my mail > server. > > Anyone with experience using these tools?
Yes, I have used Sage a lot and agree with what Michel Paul has said about it. > > -- Dave > > _______________________________________________ > Edu-sig mailing list > Edu-sig@python.org > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig > _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
