Calculus classes today do not typically teach the Risch algorithm, in my experience. However, you shouldn't design calculus courses at most places based on experiences with MIT students.
I think it is an interesting question about how much time we should spend teaching *how* to compute integrals vs. *when* to compute integrals. For the *how* question, how much by hand and how much by CAS? But all of this is getting off-track, I think. -- John On Friday, March 3, 2017 at 2:20:42 PM UTC-8, rjf wrote: > > If you were teaching calculus, at what point would you want > your students to take out a smartphone and do integrals? > > How much time would you allocate to teaching the syntax > of the CAS, what to do with error messages, how to download > the latest copy, etc.? And what benefit would this be to > the student who may still need to solve problems without > a CAS for a written exam? > > Or do we assume that it is no longer necessary to teach > methods of integration, just as it is no longer necessary > to teach how to compute square-roots, or how to > interpolate in a table of logarithms. > > Having taught a calculus + computer lab many years > ago (1973! at MIT), the students were more interested > in the Risch algorithm (simple version) than "regular" > stuff. Even today, calculus classes don't teach that, do they? > RJF > > On Wednesday, March 1, 2017 at 11:51:34 PM UTC-8, parisse wrote: >> >> >> >> Le mercredi 1 mars 2017 22:58:48 UTC+1, rjf a écrit : >>> >>> As I have said before, the objective of most students taking calculus >>> is to pass the course so they never have to know any of this integration >>> stuff ever again. Thus computer systems are useful primarily to >>> help them do homework (cheat?). And for this work, Maxima is probably >>> sufficient. >>> >>> >>> A reasonable CAS on a smartphone/tablet/calculator is sufficient for >> students learning calculus (at some point geogebra will certainly provide >> the CAS window on their app). Otherwise I believe that more symbolic >> integration is essentially interesting for benchmarks (beware that they may >> be biaised) and to make regression tests (compare output and check that the >> derivative of the antiderivative is the original function). >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
