On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 23:48, Nagarjuna G <[email protected]> wrote: > > > 2012/2/4 Wong Leo <[email protected]> >> >> Dear all , anyone know anything about this area ??
I know about a program that put Yale Math professors into middle school classrooms. They dealt with the deep philosophical questions in Foundations of Mathematics that children come up with, which their teachers know nothing about. Many of these questions become great obstacles to learning if not properly addressed. Questions addressed include * What is a number? * Is 0.99999...necessarily equal to 1? * Is there a largest number? * How many numbers are there? * Is 0 nothing, or is it really a number? * How can you have a negative number of anything? I encountered an example after I left Yale, when my mentor told me that she could not do algebra because she had been taught that a variable is a number that changes its value. This is obviously nonsense, since numbers are constants, but she could not get the teacher to see this. Without a resolution of the conundrum, she could not do algebra, even though she remembered the formulas. I explained that variable names are pronouns that can refer to different numbers at different times, just as the pronoun "you" can refer to whomever you are talking with. She went away for twenty minutes, and on returning said that she could do algebra now, and that there was nothing more to discuss. I am working on a digital version of a Ken Iverson computer algebra textbook that takes this exact tack. I will work on his Arithmetic and Calculus textbooks next. http://booki.treehouse.su/algebra-an-algorithmic-treatment/ number, character, array, list, table=noun variable=pronoun function=verb and so on. http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Books http://jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/partsofspeech.htm http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/English%20Grammar http://jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/dict2.htm Grammar The following sentences illustrate the six parts of speech: > Please follow the references cited in this paper, which may give you some > links. > http://www.springerlink.com/content/yllt2884x64p4121/ > > -- > Nagarjuna > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "WikiEducator" group. > To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org > To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
