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
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

Newsgroups: sci.math.symbolic