Hi Isaac, What I meant by "matter of taste" is that while some people find advanced presentation styles, such as the one you mention, useful, other people find them to be just toys. I belong to the latter category, but have no hope of convincing everyone else of my views, so I'd rather just call it a matter of taste.
If you asked me about my views on these matters (I have taught mathematics for a few years), I would tell you that math symbolic formalism is overrated in the first place and is given an excessive role in math teaching; I would say that math teaching should focus on conveying underlying concepts, which in most areas of math are geometric in nature, and that once the student has a grasp of how things work on a geometric level, the formalism isn't anymore a major impediment to understanding; and that therefore, focusing on cool presentation features to ease algebra teaching is like treating only the symptoms of a poor approach to math teaching. You mention Fourier transforms: that is a prime example of something that has formulas that may seem intimidating to students until they understand the basic idea, at which point the formulas become almost trivial. However, by expanding on all these things, I would be completely off-topic on this list ;-) Benoit 2013/5/28 Isaac Aggrey <isaac.agg...@gmail.com> > Hi Benoit, > > > When I started this thread, I didn't even conceive that one would want to > > apply style to individual pieces of an equation. Someone gave the example > > of applying a color to e.g. a square root sign, to highlight it; I don't > > believe much in the pedagogic value of this kind of tricks --- that > sounds > > like a toy to me --- but at this point I didn't want to argue further, as > > that is a matter of taste. > > I think there is tremendous value in styling individual pieces of an > equation, especially in educational settings, but its application is > largely unexplored. > > For example, this image [1] breaks down a Fourier Transform in such a > way that makes the equation more approachable rather than a sea of > symbols (see [2] for entire blog post). I can't help but get excited > thinking about applications in future online courses (MOOCs [3]) that > use interactive equations along with frameworks like Popcorn.js [4] to > create a more dynamic learning experience. > > [1]: http://altdevblogaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/DerivedDFT.png > [2]: > http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2011/05/17/understanding-the-fourier-transform/ > [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course > [4]: http://popcornjs.org/ > > > - Isaac > _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
