Re: Re: The audience for Mathematica (Was: Show doesn't
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg102169] Re: [mg102149] Re: The audience for Mathematica (Was: Show doesn't
- From: Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu>
- Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:56:04 -0400 (EDT)
- Organization: Mathematics & Statistics, Univ. of Mass./Amherst
- References: <h4m4ca$ecg$1@smc.vnet.net> <h4p3g1$itm$1@smc.vnet.net> <200907300946.FAA22634@smc.vnet.net>
- Reply-to: murray at math.umass.edu
This situation is hardly new nor Mathematica-specific. All one needs is a modern hand-held scientific calculator to do any symbolic integral that's likely to arise in a calculus course. And for some of the weirder integrals there, the form of the answer provided by the calculator may be more like the "by-hand" answer than what Mathematica provides (although at the moment I don't have such an example at hand). Reverse engineering the steps from the answer is an entirely different matter. Of course the pecunious student can go to www.calc101.com, buy a $25 password, and get up to 900 worked solutions, over a year's time, that include the step-by-step work! (Thanks to the webMathematica back end.) Or, if the homework comes from a popular textbook, the student could go to www.cramster.com to get many free step-by-step solutions to textbook problems, and even more such solutions if he pays a membership fee. Is this really any worse than the prior situation, where the students might sit in the hallway before class copying homework solutions from each other? David Bailey wrote: [snip] > > My only query is, how do you set homework problems where you want the > student to solve the problem by hand - say an integral that requires a > substitution. Some students will inevitably get the answer with > Mathematica, and then fill in the intermediate steps! -- Murray Eisenberg murray at math.umass.edu Mathematics & Statistics Dept. Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H) University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W) 710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801 Amherst, MA 01003-9305
- References:
- Re: The audience for Mathematica (Was: Show doesn't work inside Do
- From: David Bailey <dave@removedbailey.co.uk>
- Re: The audience for Mathematica (Was: Show doesn't work inside Do