Since we're on Programming For Kids, it's worth checking out StarLogo http://education.mit.edu/starlogo/
It's a Java-implementation of Logo, geared more towards simulation/modeling than traditional turtle graph. Intended for kids, 13 and up. Comes with various projects such as SimCity-like simulation. Interactive. > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of James Marca > Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 06:03 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [R] Problems for 13 year old > > > At that age, I recall trying to program a spaceship fighting game in > basic on the apple ][e (hopeless spaghetti that never ran, aside from > the "hyperspace" effect at the start), and later getting very involved > in programming robots in the game Robot War, which had a maximum > number of instructions and a limited command set, which required > programming in the pseudo assembly language to really milk the most > out of your code. > > In short, I enjoyed programming games and moving pixels around. > > As to scientific computing, in a similar vein I can see a teenager > becoming interested in generating fractal images, getting chaotic > behavior from a simple iterated function, or simply plotting 3-d > surfaces of sines and cosines. These all fall under "changing colored > bits on the screen as a result of some programmatic command." Some of > the clustering code is also pretty cool, I recall toying with the EM > code and being pretty impressed by its ability to pick out similar > pieces in noisy data. The inverse of clustering is of course, > generating noisy data, so that could become a game of sorts---try to > stump the clustering code by generating data from more than one > distribution. > > I use a GPS a lot with my work, and put that data into R for > analysis. Perhaps a handheld GPS unit can do the same thing, thus > offering a source of data collection to dump into R for plotting and > analysis. If of course you have a gps unit. > > James > At approximately Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 08:20:20AM -0500, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > I would like to teach some scientific/statistical computing to my 13 > > year old nephew and was considering using R for this. He has a Mac G3 > > OS 9.1. > > > > I am looking for ideas for problems that would be interesting and > > motivating for someone that age. I recently taught him the basics of > > HTML and noticed that he particularly was intrigued by the ability to > > change colors; thus, perhaps problems that involve flashy color plots > > would keep his attention. > > > > Thanks for any ideas. > > > > ______________________________________________ > [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list > http://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
