C Y <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: [...]
| I'm not a teacher (only done a few labs over the years and a bit of | tutoring) but if I were to offer a suggestion (just what you needed ;-) | I would say this: | | 1. Start by introducing either Maxima using the wxMaxima interface or | perhaps Yacas. Either of those will probably be less intimidating to | students up front, and their limitations will not be readily apparent. | Their prior experience with calculators will map to either of these | systems reasonably well - they will most likely be less intimidated if | they don't need to comprehend what a "type" is or why it matters up | front. this course is at a graduate level, and many of the students have some basic knowledge of data structures, algorithms, programming languages, generic programming, compilers, etc. | 2. Develop the students by gradually exploring more of the potential | of the first system, and take them to some problems that "symbolic | computation" doesn't handle so well. I.e., show them both the utility | of symbolic computation (which the commercial success of Mathematica | and Maple prove is considerable) and its limitations. This is good | both for showing the limitations of the approach and also why computers | can't substitute for an educated brain. You have a good point. | 3. Then, later on in the course, introduce them to a more formal | approach that avoids these limitations. Most will probably not be real | excited about this because it will look harder (being precise is always | hard work ;-) but most will probably remember and if, in the future, | they begin to do work that would benefit from Axiom's more rigorous | approach they will know both about Axiom and why it might be better. That is an excellent observation. I will work out some of these constructive suggestions. Thanks! -- Gaby _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
