Programming with Mathematica

Some ideas on improving our mathematical programming course

• Incorporate projects with the following goals
  • Introduce students to ideas from upper-level math courses they may not otherwise see
  • Include some mathematical modeling
  • Include some experimental mathematics
  • Encourage the writing of Mathematica Demos
• Emphasize the unity of mathematics, computing and modeling/experimentation
• Use Mathematica's date base?

• Needs and concerns
  • Introduce iteration early through the use of Nest, NestList and related commands
  • Introduce the Print command earlier.
  • Introduce the compound-function earlier???
  • Introduce manipulate very early
  • Introduce and emphasize the idea of recursion (many will be learning induction concurrently)
  • Emphasize the usefulness of what we are learning through simulation, experimentation, visualization and interactivity
  • Will it be too much to learn new ideas and the coding at the same time? (Isn't this what we do all the time?)
  • Remember: this is a CSC course!
  • Review ideas from calculus and extend to DE (and other areas)

• In the classroom
  • Meet often in the lab
    • Allow the students immediate use and practice
    • Transfer solutions to the projector and/or have students compare their solutions to the expert solution
    • Have students work in teams of 2 or 3.
    • Have 1-day tests in the lab - forgo the in class test?
  • Have larger projects counting a significant part of the class grade

Things I want to remember

RecurrenceTable