On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:47 PM, David Joyner <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >At the end of the course, what will they be tested on? Officially they'll need to be able to display competency on our math analysis final. I can test them on whatever else I want regarding their ability to model concepts computationally, but the bottom line is that I am responsible for making sure that the ordinary precalc standards are met. >Does this course replace a precalc course? No, it will simply enhance it. > >This will determine to an extent what you can do. > Right! And that's the challenge - 'covering' all the details in the curriculum while exploring things in a relevant way. But I was able to experiment this year, and have found, as I've mentioned at other times, that list comprehension works wonderfully for illustrating sigma notation, among many other things. > > When I taught http://www.usna.edu/Users/math/wdj/teach/sm450.html > (python and some fairly advanced discrete math), I found that > the Python was almost completely orthogonal to the math. OK, that's good to know. And interesting. Why? Maybe the 'orthogonality' points to something we need in our math education as a whole? Some really good news - a student just tonight sent me a link to a Sage extra credit paper he had created. I was thrilled - he figured out a whole bunch of stuff on his own. In the past I've always winced at 'extra credit', but in the last few years I've been making use of it. I figured it could be a way to get kids to explore Python and Sage. So this kid wrote a little paper on arithmetic and geometric sequences and series. I explained a few things to him to get started, but he clearly did a lot of research on his own. The fact that he was able to do this is really encouraging. I told him that this was a perfect illustration of what I want to have kids do next year. -- 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.
