On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Francois Maltey <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>> I'm looking for success stories from people who have used Sage in
>> their undergraduate teaching, particularly at the lower years.
>>
>> Also, any advice in convincing one's peers and institution that Sage
>> is an appropriate path to take? In particular, in switching away from
>> a proprietary product.
>>
>> My department is moving away from Maple as a component in our first
>> year teaching, and I may be in a position to influence what we start
>> using next September. I haven't looked over the ciriculum of the
>> current course but it might include calculus, linear algebra,
>> differential equations and various pure maths.
>>
> In my French class I must use maple for tests... But I can use an other
> system for few exercices and my students could use an other system, for
> nicer plot or better mathematics.
>
> A colleague uses alive system on an usb keys or a cdrom when there isn't
> the right program on the computer in his classroom. A sage for ubuntu
> may be useful.
>
> The other PC are 2 or 3 old year PC with windows xp. One time the
> install is done, we don't change any program, it takes time to update 40 PC.
>
> This year I don't promote Sage in my school because I don't know it
> enough, and I can't do the standard exercices I make with maple. I learn
> ! I'll see next year...
>
> I'm not sure that other teachers will quickly change from maple to sage
> for their own calculus because today I see 4 mains difference between
> maple and sage :
>
> 1/ Syntax object.method, mathematics writes function(object)
> 2/ Sage forces to declare symbolic variables, Maple not
> 3/ Object in Sage are finest than Maple way as 0*aMatrix
> 4/ The sage lists aren't the usual lisp-list
> 5/ Some "basis" mathematics are missing in sage. [I don't yet have the
> complete list]
>
> The 2 first points are the most important.
Robert Bradshaw and Mike Hansen have both pointed out before that the
first 2 points could probably easily be changed (via a non-default
mode) in Sage. This would involve evaluating each input block of
code, catching NameErrors, making uncalled names into symbolic
variables and making called ones into formal method calls. It would
probably be easy, and just a few lines of code, and would just totally
solve 1, 2 for people who prefer that behavior (not me). I may try a
mockup of this later today, since it comes up a lot.
William
>
> Computer|Sage|Python players don't imagine how some people dislike to
> change their own use of any system.
>
> A initial input file with a more or less maple syntax may help a lot.
>
> var('a b c d f g h j k l m n o p q r s t u v w')
>
> def rhs (eq) : eq.rhs() # and about 10 or 20 mains functions
>
> The last point isn't a problem because a fine use of list means that the
> user like computer science. The other uses of lists don't separate
> sage-list and lisp-list. And maple-lists aren't so clear.
>
>
> Francois
>
> >
>
--
William Stein
Associate Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org
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