I don't know the answer, but maybe this is a way around it: sage: 23/10 in srange(3, step = 1/10) True
You might also use this is discuss how numbers are represented in a computer (leading into how characters are represented in a computer., which might also spark an interesting class discussion..). On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 12:03 PM, michel paul <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > I'm a high school math teacher experimenting with getting kids to use SAGE. > My situation - high school math in a department that rigidly believes either > that > > 1. graphing calculators provide sufficient technology for contemporary math > classrooms or that > 2. technology is something secondary to the mathematics itself - it might > be 'useful', but it's not what mathematics itself is about. > > It has been extremely frustrating trying to communicate in this > environment. Ideally my vision would be to create a computational analysis > kind of course where the kids would first learn how to articulate basic math > concepts in pure Python. Things like the Euclidean Algorithm. Simple > enough but important enough to focus on for good computational ways to > think. Important - the point wouldn't be Python per se. The point would be > computational thinking. How can we analyze tasks or concepts? Then show > them what they have access to in SAGE. Wow. There's absolutely no rational > reason at all why a course like that shouldn't be promoted. > > Well, anyway, at the moment I've opted for a strategy to weave SAGE into the > curriculum as unobtrusively as possible. I have been successful in getting > all my kids to open up SAGE notebook accounts. I've decided to weave in the > use of SAGE as we work through our standard text. I'm going to use SAGE as > my blackboard as often as possible, and I'm posting SAGE notebook worksheets > paralleling the examples in our text for the kids to experiment with. It's > a weird balance - trying to introduce using Python or SAGE to kids who have > never associated that with 'math'. Funny, their attitudes actually parallel > 1 and 2 above. It's such a weird culture. But other kids are seeing that, > yeah, this really is pretty cool. So I hope to build momentum from that. > > So we are about to study interval notation. I'm going to show them how > interval notation means something different in SAGE than it does in their > texts. However, there's lots of ways they are related. > > My question - the text expects them to express things like (1, 4) intersect > [2, 8] on a number line to produce the graph of [2, 4). That kind of > stuff. It will also ask them to solve and graph typical linear > inequalities, absolute value inequalties, etc. Is there a way to easily > illustrate this in SAGE? > > I was contemplating discussing something like an interval testing function. > But I also notice that testing something like > > 2.3 in [1 .. 3, step = .1] > > produces False. Issues like this can be a booby trap with already reluctant > learners. > > Thanks for any advice, > > Michel Paul > > > > -- > "Computer science is the new mathematics." > > -- Dr. Christos Papadimitriou > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
