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- From: dlb5404@tamsun.tamu.edu (Daryl Biberdorf)
- Newsgroups: sci.math.symbolic
- Subject: Re: Teaching CS to science students (was: The Real Meaning of Efficiency?)
- Date: 23 Nov 1992 18:06:59 -0600
- Organization: Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
- Lines: 82
- Message-ID: <1errn3INNjan@tamsun.tamu.edu>
- References: <1992Nov20.183648.4441@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> <By6311.8FC@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> <1992Nov23.180716.1740@EE.Stanford.EDU>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: tamsun.tamu.edu
-
- In article <1992Nov23.180716.1740@EE.Stanford.EDU> siegman@EE.Stanford.EDU (Anthony E. Siegman) writes:
- >
- > I also absolutely believe in having students use the best tools at
- >hand, and today that's Mathematica or something like it. But consider
- >the following: last week I gave a problem in a midterm exam for a
- >beginning lasers class which involved solving for just one of the
- > [story about how good student messed up a problem because the
- > student understood the material well, the student could not
- > perform algebraic manipulations by hand quickly enough to finish
- > on time]
-
- > This leads me to two questions:
- >
- > 1) If all students have and use Mathematica for this kind of
- >calculations -- as I agree they should -- how are we going to teach
- >(or _should_ we even teach?) the kinds of clever little tricks we've
- >learned from experience for the hand manipulation of algebraic
- >equations, or the simpler differential equations?
-
- I don't know how much weight this carries, but I am currently an
- undergraduate senior majoring in computer engineering. I am presently
- trying to survive Electrical Engineering 314, which calls itself
- "Linear Circuits II," but is really a signal analysis course with
- a large math component.
-
- I have been using Maple throughout the semester to assist me with my
- homework by grunting through very nasty systems of equations and
- verifying my own work in transforming and inverse transforming
- circuit equations. I was warned early on by an electrical
- engineer friend of mine that I needed to stay proficient at doing
- these sorts of operations by hand. I heeded that advice, and
- I still work many problems by hand just to keep my skills sharp.
-
- However, it seems to me that the EE department could do SO much more
- with the class if the time-consuming drudgery of computation could
- be minimized. It is not unusual for me to spend 20 minutes wrestling
- with a nasty integral -- yet, I demonstrated my understanding of the
- concept at the point where I wrote down the integral in the first
- place. I can easily spend four hours working on four homework
- problems.
-
- Regarding tricks, I assume that there used to be some handy tricks
- for making slide rule computations faster and simpler, yet these
- tricks aren't very useful to us any more due to the decline of
- the slide rule. The same will happen for any other sort of
- manual computation as faster, more capable devices come along.
- (Imagine something along the lines of a tricorder on Star Trek!)
-
- > 2) How can we give midterms and final exams? Does every student
- >have to have a laptop? Does every exam have to be a "take-home", so
- >the student can use his or her computer?
-
- To answer the first question: Give midterms and final exams that test
- concepts, what the concepts MEAN (e.g. what does the convolution
- integral *really* mean?), and how to apply them, not computational
- skills and mathematical tricks.
-
- As for every student having a laptop, when laptops fall to around
- $250 or thereabouts, why *not* require them? I suppose that
- calculators that offered a tenth of what my HP-42S can do were scarce
- at one time (I was a toddler at that time), but not any more. I know
- scores of people who own and use miniature powerhouses like HP-48SXs,
- HP-28Ss, TI-85s, graphing Casios, and lowly HP-42Ss. The students
- have demonstrated their willingness to purchase these types of
- calculators to make their computational lives simpler (I'm also certain
- that many of these calculators are purchased to make a status
- statement of sorts.) Students should consider the cost to be
- an investment in the tools of the trade much in the same what that
- art students and such purchase their supplies.
-
- My laptop, a Mac PowerBook 100 (4 MB, 20 MB disk), is quite sufficient
- to run Maple at speeds I consider acceptable (let's not discuss
- this particular point) -- I've tried it. In fact I plan I buying
- Maple soon so I can run it at home. With current technology
- developments, I fully expect a "calculator" with similar capabilities
- to my PowerBook to weigh under 1 pound (~.5 kg) within another 3 to 4
- years and cost under $300.
-
- Daryl
- --
- Daryl Biberdorf N5GJM d-biberdorf@tamu.edu or dlb5404@tamsun.tamu.edu
-
-