As a current college student myself, I feel like chiming in here. 2009/3/2 michel paul <mpaul...@gmail.com>: > However, it is again more mathematically effective to read "2 + 3 * 4" as > "the sum of 2 and the product of 3 and 4", or, sum(2, product(3, 4)). No > ambiguity there! And this is how you have to think when you hook chains of > functions together. This kind of stuff could be done very early in the > curriculum. Doesn't have to wait for either advanced math classes or > computer science.
Perhaps it may be appropriate to try and introduce prefix notation to students, such as what lisp uses. So instead of "2 + 3 * 4" or sum(2, product(3, 4)) it would be (+ 2 (* 3 4)). Unfortunately, that might make their eyes glaze over, but you could state how it is unambiguous and maybe formalize infix notation for them. > Math teachers often forget, or are unaware, that the ordinary arithmetic > operators are themselves functions. I think it would be good for math > classes to explore this kind of functional composition for very simple > ideas. Personally I found that being able to think about many math concepts as functions helped me a great deal with managing the complexity of many math courses. Just my 2 cents. -Jason _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
