Re: Student version in high schools
- To: mathgroup at christensen.cybernetics.net
- Subject: [mg811] Re: Student version in high schools
- From: trebla at io.org (Albert Y.C. Lai)
- Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 01:06:04 -0400
- Organization: Internex Online, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (416 363 3783)
In article <3md0ag$830 at news0.cybernetics.net>, mhalls at cc.weber.edu (Michael Halls) wrote: > My question is what did I miss? What things did everyone else do in high > school that I didn't do? Or was everyone else using a better (less crippled) > program? I guess my question is what is it even used for in high schools > anyway? To put it very arrogantly, I would guess that the highschool mathematics curriculum is not sophisticated enough to demand something as powerful as Mathematica. (Like, they only deal with single-variable functions.) On the other hand highschool students would certainly need a graphing calculator, since these days they need one to graph y=x. (Some would go as far as to graph y=1 with a graphing calculator; the rest would wonder how to graph x=1 with a graphing calculator.) I am in university and Mathematica helps me in a wide range of work, from the highly continuous things (calculus, differential equations, visualizing real and complex functions) to highly discrete things (number theory, factorization). The programming languauge, which is like C, Lisp, and Prolog at the same time, is particularly useful and natural. For highschools, I think the best people to use Mathematica are the teachers. They can set up demostrations and nice graphics on Mathematica for students to see. The students themselves don't really need to use it. -- Albert Y.C. Lai trebla at io.org 00Laiyuc at wave.scar.utoronto.ca Lai at titania.scar.utoronto.ca http://www.io.org/~trebla/