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Re: Re: The audience for Mathematica (Was: Show doesn't work inside Do

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  • Subject: [mg102161] Re: [mg102149] Re: The audience for Mathematica (Was: Show doesn't work inside Do
  • From: "David Park" <djmpark at comcast.net>
  • Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:54:22 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <h4m4ca$ecg$1@smc.vnet.net> <h4p3g1$itm$1@smc.vnet.net> <6722010.1248948801687.JavaMail.root@n11>

Very simple. Have the students use the Student's Integral section in
Presentations. There the students would have to apply integration steps
explicitly showing their choice of technique and the intermediate results.
It's the Integration Steps example at the following site:

Peter Lindsay at the Mathematical Institute in the University of St Andrews
[ www.mcs.st-and.ac.uk ] has kindly undertaken to maintain an archive that
provides downloadable notebooks and PDF files for various Presentations
solutions that have appeared on MathGroup.

http://blackbook.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/~Peter/djmpark/html/ 



David Park
djmpark at comcast.net
http://home.comcast.net/~djmpark/  


From: David Bailey [mailto:dave at removedbailey.co.uk] 

Helen Read wrote:

> 
> You can teach them both at the same time, using one to reinforce the
other.
> 
> I teach my (university) calculus students *calculus*, using Mathematica
> 
> - as a tool for graphing and visualization
> - as a tool for carrying out numerical calculations
> - to check work done by hand (integrals, derivatives, algebra, etc.)
> - to carry out such work (integrals, derivatives, algebra, etc.) after 
> we have done the thinking / setting up
> - for discovery learning, where the students can explore and learn by 
> looking at examples, and build or re-inforce concepts
> 

Your teaching style sounds really effective - certainly in comparison 
with the courses I attended as a student - in the days of chalk!

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!

David Bailey
http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk




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