Re: Work on Basic Mathematica Stephen!
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- Subject: [mg130788] Re: Work on Basic Mathematica Stephen!
- From: Murray Eisenberg <murray at math.umass.edu>
- Date: Wed, 15 May 2013 02:53:31 -0400 (EDT)
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As I already wrote, "Whether [the training wheels] has the intended effect is a separate question." That's an empirical question to be decided by experience of new learners and teachers of new learners. Meanwhile, an experienced user can turn off the doo-dads. On May 13, 2013, at 4:46 PM, djmpark <djmpark at comcast.net> wrote: > I don't believe the "training wheels" model can really achieve the > objective. Are these people preschoolers? The situation is rather something > like this. Suppose all education was conducted orally until the junior year > in college. No or little writing. Then the students are to get into some > serious writing work. They are to write a critique of Marcel Proust's > Remembrance of Things Past. They do get some powerful tools to do this: a > computer with Microsoft Word, which has spell checking and some passable > syntax and grammar checking; a dictionary and French/English lexicon, and > French and English versions of Proust's work and maybe a couple grammars. > And since the students have never written much before, Word has been > augmented with training wheels. A little button always appears at the start > of a new paragraph with choices 1) Would you like to type a new sentence? 2) > Would you like to enter a sentence in free spoken form? 3) Would you like > Literary|Alpha to search for ideas on some topic? 4) Would you like to start > a new Section? At the end of a paragraph a Suggestions box will appear with > something like "Would you like us to add a sentence on Marcel's health > problems in relation to the topic?" Gee, I never thought about health > problems. So nice to remind me of that. Several weeks of this and they > should be up to speed. > > Do you believe that method would achieve some worthwhile objective? Isn't it > rather that it usually takes years for a student to become really good at > expressing and manipulating ideas in written form? It's not surprising that > some students, without much experience, would become terrified at a blank > sheet of paper. Now add in mathematics and all of the new active and > dynamical possibilities for expressing and manipulating mathematical ideas > and don't we have a considerably greater learned skill? You can't replace > extended education and practice by software. It's the failure to get > Mathematica into early education that is the problem and getting it there is > the remedy.. .. > > > From: Murray Eisenberg [mailto:murray at math.umass.edu] > > Re "clean" notebook interface: > > An experienced Mathematica user might well prefer a totally clean notebook > as starting point for some work. But a new user, or potential new customer, > might well panic at an essentially blank window. (The faint horizontal line > with it's "+" icon at the top of a new notebook window is at least a > starting point. > > Similarly for once the new user has typed and possibly evaluated some input: > what should go there? what's the correct form? what can I do with it? So WRI > has attempted to provide some guidance directly in the notebook, outside the > Documentation Center. (Whether it has the intended effect is a separate > question.) > > For example, suppose the new user, or somebody just trying out Mathematica, > successfully types and evaluates: > > Plot[Exp[-x] Cos[x], {x, -Pi/2, Pi/2}] > > And possibly (probably?) the user wants to enhance the graph. How do that? > Well, the Next-computation Suggestions Bar provides an immediate and obvious > way to approach it -- without having to look up Plot, wade through the long > list of Options. > > I write the above as somebody who has helped hundreds of university students > learn Mathematica and who realizes how much more efficient the learning > would have been over the years had such front end doo-dads been available. > They're like bicycle training wheels: they can help you get started, but you > can get rid of them when they get in the way.. .. > --- Murray Eisenberg murray at math.umass.edu Mathematics & Statistics Dept. Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H) University of Massachusetts 413 545-2838 (W) 710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801 Amherst, MA 01003-9305
- References:
- Work on Basic Mathematica Stephen!
- From: "djmpark" <djmpark@comcast.net>
- Re: Work on Basic Mathematica Stephen!
- From: "djmpark" <djmpark@comcast.net>
- Work on Basic Mathematica Stephen!