On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 2:17 PM, Alan Kay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I very much agree with this! Simulations are still "just math" and "real > science" is about the relationships we can build between our representations > (which are in the end "just stories", even if coherent and logically > connected) and "what's out there". This "outlook" (or the more fancy phrase > "epistemological stance") is the most important part of learning science > (and is the least well taught or learned -- at least in the US). > > Bad simulations can be edifying if a real effort is made to see what the > real world seems to do, but most people, and especially most children, are > all too willing to substitute the story for the mapping. > > Cheers, > > Alan >
It is interesting to think about the educational possibilities of a scenario like one laptop running Measure (with sensors measuring some physical parameter, e.g. a pendulum breaking a light beam) and another laptop running thesimulation of the actual experiment in real-time right next to it. "All models are wrong, some models are useful" George S.S. Box cjl
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