On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 5:15 AM, kcrisman <[email protected]> wrote:
If you can do a similar one with quadratics, you'll really be in business. Funny thing, in the same problem set (this was a review/preliminary chapter for analysis) was one of those find the border around the rectangle problems: border = x width = 10 + 2*border length = 20 + 2*border area = 600 width*length == area 4(x+5)(x+10)=600 solve(_, x) [x==-20x==5] So, the border must be 5. It's nice how this encapsulates a problem. It could serve as notes. On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 5:15 AM, kcrisman <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Sep 21, 11:17 pm, michel paul <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 5:53 AM, kcrisman <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > One idea you may want to consider is using Sage strictly *without* any > > > > > programming per se > > > > Something that occurred as kind of a surprise - an example problem in our > > text involved the income figures for Oprah, Seinfeld, and Simon Cowell. > > Given relations between their incomes, you have to find the specific > > values. Kind of a silly, typical, schoolish text book problem. > > > > So I entered the following in SAGE: > > > > Cowell = x> Seinfeld = Cowell + 15 > > > Oprah = Cowell + 215 > > > > > Oprah + Seinfeld + Cowell == 365 > > > > (figures represent millions) > > > > When you evaluate this, SAGE produces the more typical algebra equation: > > > > > 3x+230=365 > > > > > The kids could really appreciate that. It made total sense to them > what > > > > was going on. It was a pleasant surprise for me, as I hadn't intended > for > > that to be the point, but of course!, you can organize the information > from > > a word problem in this kind of intuitive pseudo-codish way, and SAGE will > > translate your expressions into standard algebra. > > > > So that was fun. > > > > And really *immediately* shows what the point of algebra is. If you > can do a similar one with quadratics, you'll really be in business. > Great story - thanks! > > - kcrisman > > > -- "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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
