On Sep 21, 11:17 pm, michel paul <mpaul...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 5:53 AM, kcrisman <kcris...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> One idea you may want to consider is using Sage strictly *without* any
>
> > programming per se
>
> Something that occurred as kind of a surprise - an example problem in our
> text involved the income figures for Oprah, Seinfeld, and Simon Cowell.
> Given relations between their incomes, you have to find the specific
> values. Kind of a silly, typical, schoolish text book problem.
>
> So I entered the following in SAGE:
>
> Cowell = x> Seinfeld = Cowell + 15
> > Oprah = Cowell + 215
>
> > Oprah + Seinfeld + Cowell == 365
>
> (figures represent millions)
>
> When you evaluate this, SAGE produces the more typical algebra equation:
>
> > 3x+230=365
>
> > The kids could really appreciate that. It made total sense to them what
>
> was going on. It was a pleasant surprise for me, as I hadn't intended for
> that to be the point, but of course!, you can organize the information from
> a word problem in this kind of intuitive pseudo-codish way, and SAGE will
> translate your expressions into standard algebra.
>
> So that was fun.
>
And really *immediately* shows what the point of algebra is. If you
can do a similar one with quadratics, you'll really be in business.
Great story - thanks!
- kcrisman
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