Hi, I have a "calculus with computers" course. The biggest suggestion I have is from the student's point of view--most students I've known don't care whether a package is open source vs. whether it's closed. They do like the free aspect, but what they care about most of all is, "How do I use this thing?" I personally would move pp. 9-12 to the beginning, then reorganize pp. 1-8 under the heading, "What's so special about Sage?" or something similar.
Some things are repeated. For example, p. 1 lists several packages that are included as part of Sage; these are repeated on p. 5. My personal experience with OpenOffice is that while it "can" read Microsoft Office formats, they often come out looking bad. PowerPoint presentations are the worst, but the department here also sends out the Faculty Annual Activity Report in Microsoft Word format, and I'm glad one person here has written a LaTeX version, because OpenOffice doesn't display the FAAR properly, or a lot of other files besides. It might be better to soften the claim in the second sentence of the third footnote to something like, "To a limited extent, it can read and write to Microsoft Office formats as well." The quotes are great, especially the Torvalds quote. john perry On Jan 17, 4:50 pm, David Joyner <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi: > > I posted a draft of a hopefully motivating and low-level paper > athttp://sage.math.washington.edu/home/wdj/teaching/calc1-sage/an-invit... > It is designed to fit into a book on calculus with Sage, as a > introductory chapter. I assume the reader is assumed to know little or > no calculus but does > have an interest in computers. Basically, if you have a "calculus with > computers" > course at your school, the student in that course is what I'm trying > to think of. It needs > to be fleshed out in spots but I thought I'd ask for suggestions > before going further > in case it seems like a bad direction to some people. > > Any suggestions? I would like to add a quote on how open source > programs often are higher > in quality (latex is an example), one that goes beyond the Okounkov quote, but > I can't remember where I saw one. Does something like that ring a bell > with anyone? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-edu" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-edu?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
