Re: Promath

[Petr Vicherek <petr@ied.com>]

   Hi Robert,

  Great porgram, I was just putitng somethignsimilar togethrer and it
could be released in a day or two. It will be perhaps complementary.

Robert Hopcroft wrote:
> Odile, I have put my ramblings on Promath quizzes at
> http://cran.mit.edu/~hopcroft/promath_quiz.html. This gives me a place
> to store and organize my thoughts until I learn how to display them with
> the required graphics

   I have some ideas about that, but what is actualy required?


   Now some criticising on the ramblingz....

> First task, grasping the meaning of zero.

  Sorry. Homo sapiens and especially children have a high capability of
abstraction. They can induce wery well from special cases to more
absract. They can easily deduce '0' after they learn 1, 2, 3 and theis
succession. But if you _begin_ with explanation that this '0' something
means nothing, they will be quite confused.

  Maybe I did not understand, what you meant as _first_. The sequence
that you have there would be gread for K3 student or older. But I am not
sure, if this can be called Promath.

 But the progress should definitely lead from an example to abstraction.
(See Jan Amos Komensky, Didactica Magna, first issued in 1658 ;-)

--
                                                    Petr Vicherek

Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis
_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/