Re: Re: Mathematica can't win against Tiger Woods
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg19833] Re: [mg19765] Re: [mg19677] Mathematica can't win against Tiger Woods
- From: Paul Abbott <paul at physics.uwa.edu.au>
- Date: Sun, 19 Sep 1999 01:20:21 -0400
- Organization: University of Western Australia
- References: <7rshoi$3hi@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Hi Leszek: > Think about the education which is precisely about solving again and > again old problems. How you are going to justify the usefulness of > Mathematica in education, if it can't easily replicate known results? I understand what you are saying -- but to me you've identified one of the major problems with "traditional" education! If education only involves solving again and again old problems -- which, by construction, usually have "nice" closed-form solutions or can be solved by tricks or heuristic methods -- then students come away thinking that all problems are of this type. The original example that started this thread was to solve for the motion of a particle with air resistance. Because no closed-form solution was expected for the full problem (but there is one!) the problem was "simplified" by linearizing the air-friction -- in an attempt to develop more insight. It is this "simplification" that actually muddies the water! As another example, instead of getting students to solve the Schrodinger equation for hydrogen using the "classical" approach (and I admit I do get my students to work through this problem using Mathematica) get them to compute the ground state energy for helium using a variational method. This is described in all the classical text books -- but is never set as a problem because it is thought to be too (computationally) demanding for undergraduates. But is actually rather easy to do using Mathematica. And, to me, this is an example of the correct application of a tool like Mathematica in education (and research). Cheers, Paul ____________________________________________________________________ Paul Abbott Phone: +61-8-9380-2734 Department of Physics Fax: +61-8-9380-1014 The University of Western Australia Nedlands WA 6907 mailto:paul at physics.uwa.edu.au AUSTRALIA http://physics.uwa.edu.au/~paul God IS a weakly left-handed dice player ____________________________________________________________________