Comments on: Teaching calculus

By: Peter Boothe

Peter Boothe — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:03:58 +0000

Well put, Paul.

Do you have any links with regards to teaching pattern recognition? I'd love to know what the literature on the subject says.

By: Cj

Cj — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:39:35 +0000

That's pretty cool. Your pragmatic investigation was a very nice contrast to the romantic language David Berlinski uses in The Tour of the Calculus (my current reading material). Neat! Now that pesky thesis is done there might be more cool stuff like this to read. yea!

By: Paul Bunson

Paul Bunson — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:42:57 +0000

Interesting. My suspicion, having talked with folks who research the teaching of problem solving, is that you will need to do a lot more than spend a little extra time in converting the pattern recognizers.

As for the 0's and 1's at the bottom, it seems that while this may be true, heisenberg has a way of mucking things up.

By: Mom

Mom — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:54:45 +0000

Hmmm…could I learn the chain rule, do you think?

This type of analysis is a brilliant tool for teachers, I think. Kudos to you for thinking of it and then doing it!