MathPiper, an education-oriented computer algebra system.

[Ted Kosan]

Hello,

My name is Ted Kosan and I am the project leader of the open source
MathPiper computer algebra system (CAS) project:

http://www.mathpiper.org/

MathPiper is an education-oriented CAS and our vision for MathPiper is
very close to the vision that Conrad Wolfram discussed in his recent
"Teach Kids Real Math With Computers" TED talk (which I noticed this
group discussed last month):

http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_math_with_computers.html

We have three graphical user interfaces in mind for MathPiper:

1) MathPiperIDE (which is currently available for download from the
MathPiper website) is a computer programming user interface. It is
mostly meant to be used by people who are doing programming-intensive
work with MathPiper and it is targeted at "introduction to computer
programming" classes.

2) The MathPiper console (which is present at the bottom edge of
MathPiperIDE) can run separately from MathPiperIDE and this is being
designed for people who want to do quick calculations with MathPiper.
The MathPiper console can be easily placed on websites and it should
also work well on portable devices.

3) The MathPiper notebook is currently in the early stages of
development and it will be a mathematics-oriented document creation
application. The MathPiper notebook is being specifically designed
for use in math, science, and engineering classes.

A significant amount of work still needs to be done on MathPiper
before it reaches the design goals we have set for it. However, it is
currently functional enough to support a wide range of uses.

Anyway, I thought that now would be a good time to let people in this
group know about MathPiper in case anyone wanted to play with it over
the holidays :-)

Ted

[Bob Mathews]

Thanks Ted. Just finished unzipping it. I notice it has LaTeX output.
Haven't had a chance to investigate that just yet, but I'm wondering if
this aspect of MathPiper is fully-developed, or do you expect
enhancements? Any possibility of LaTeX input? How about MathML output?

Bob

Hello,

http://www.mathpiper.org/

http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_math_with_com
puters.html

Ted

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[Maria Droujkova]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 2:37 AM, Ted Kosan <ted....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

My name is Ted Kosan and I am the project leader of the open source
MathPiper computer algebra system (CAS) project:

http://www.mathpiper.org/


MathPiper is an education-oriented CAS and our vision for MathPiper is
very close to the vision that Conrad Wolfram discussed in his recent

"Teach Kids Real Math With Computers" TED talk.

Ted,

This is fantastic!  I have a "newbie" question. What elements of design and features set MathPiper apart from other computer algebra tools? Including Wolfram|Alpha, since Conrad is mentioned here.


Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

[Ted Kosan]

Bob wrote:

> I notice it has LaTeX output.
> Haven't had a chance to investigate that just yet, but I'm wondering if
> this aspect of MathPiper is fully-developed, or do you expect
> enhancements?

Our plan is for the current LaTeX capabilities to be the starting
point for more advanced LaTeX capabilities. For example, one goal for
the MathPiper notebook is for the user to be able to accept
math-oriented LaTeX input and render it both inside of blocks of text
and separately from text.

>Any possibility of LaTeX input?

MathPiper can accept LaTeX input for rendering purposes (see the
ViewLatex function), but it is not able to perform any calculations
with this input.

> How about MathML output?

MathML output is not supported yet, although it is planned. However,
OpenMath output is currently supported with the OMForm function:

In> OMForm(x^2)
Result: True
Side Effects:
<OMOBJ>
<OMA>
<OMS cd="arith1" name="power"/>
<OMV name="x"/>
<OMI>2</OMI>
</OMA>
</OMOBJ>

Ted

[Ted Kosan]

Maria wrote:

>I have a "newbie" question. What elements of design and features set MathPiper
>apart from other computer algebra tools? Including Wolfram|Alpha, since Conrad
>is mentioned here.

I could not come up was a simple answer to this question, so here is a
relatively complex one :-)

General-purpose computer algebra systems have been available since the
1960's and there are currently over 50 computer algebra systems
available:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_computer_algebra_systems

During the past 50 years, most general-purpose CAS's have evolved
towards having similar design elements and features. For example,
most current CAS's have a math-oriented programming language, a large
library of functions, a GUI, 2D and 3D plotting, rendering of
mathematics in traditional mathematics format, etc. One of our goals
with MathPiper is to simply have it support many of the design
elements and features that these other systems support.

How then can widespread use of MathPiper in secondary education be
achieved if the features it provides are similar to those of other
CAS's? In order to understand our MathPiper adoption strategy, one
must first realize that overall CAS use in secondary education is very
low. The feature set of even the free CAS's is fairly rich, so it
cannot be the lack of features that is holding CAS's back from being
used in secondary education.

If it is not a lack of features, then what is the thing that is
holding CAS's back from being used in secondary education? Whatever
it is, this thing is so formidable that Conrad Wolfram represented it
as a huge chasm that could only be crossed by leaping over it. He
even brings up the idea that the chasm is so wide that the leap might
need to be taken by a whole country at once in order to succeed.

My thought is that most people who have tried to introduce a CAS into
secondary education have introduced it directly into the math
curriculum. To me, Conrad's chasm symbolizes the "directly into the
secondary education math curriculum" approach to getting a CAS into
secondary schools. This approach is a very challenging one to take
and I think that the CAS that is currently in the best position to
succeed with this direct approach is GeoGebraCAS.

The MathPiper adoption strategy is based on the realization that there
are alternative ways to introduce a CAS into secondary education other
than through the math curriculum. I think the most promising of these
other ways is with an "introduction to computer programming" course.
With this computer programming-based approach, one is only faced with
a small gully to cross instead of a wide chasm.

What makes MathPiper different than most other CAS's is that it
currently emphasizes the computer programming aspects of a CAS over
the aspects of a CAS that are traditionally emphasized.

Ted

[Murray]

Hi Ted

This is a really interesting development. I played with it for a while
and can see you have been busy! Your "Explore STEM concepts" document
is quite extensive.

You said:

> ...one must first realize that overall CAS use in secondary education is very

> low.  The feature set of even the free CAS's is fairly rich, so it
> cannot be the lack of features that is holding CAS's back from being
> used in secondary education.

It's not only at secondary level where math teachers are reluctant to
embrace CASs. For years I have been encouraging adoption of tools such
as Wolfram|Alpha in my institution (where every staff and student has
a laptop, so are certainly used to using technology tools).

But I always get the rejoinder - "What about the steps?" Most math
teachers I talk to feel too much is lost if students "cheat" using a
tool rather than doing it all laboriously on paper. And I also suspect
these lecturers feel since they suffered through pages and pages of
drill and kill, they must make their students do likewise.

A wide chasm, indeed.

I wish you well!

[Steve Garlick]

Hi Ted,

Just wanted to say I think you've really nailed what is needed in secondary education. I've been using geogebra extensively, and missing the lack of programming ability. I've been revisiting Logo implementations, but there's a lack of higher level maths functions and graphing ability. Also a shortage of cross-platform implementations that will run on student laptops (In Australia, students are issued with a small laptop that is 'locked' in terms of adding new software. However, java apps can be downloaded and installed. Other CAS systems like SAGE are a little too advanced for our secondary students.

You've really answered my wishes!!

I've only just started playing with the IDE, and I'm hoping that the Geogebra - MathPiper interface will simplify over time.

Great stuff, well done!

Steve Garlick
Secondary Maths teacher
Casino High School

[Ted Kosan]

Maria wrote:

>What elements of design and features set MathPiper apart from other
>computer algebra tools?

One feature that MathPiper has that most CASs don't is the ability to
easily view the rules for the operators and functions. This can be
done by selecting the "View source code" link which is at the bottom
of most of the documentation pages in the MathPiperDocs plugin. For
example, here are some of the rules for the + operator:

100 # 0 + _x <-- x;
100 # _x + 0 <-- x;
100 # _x + _x <-- 2*x;
100 # _x + n_IsConstant*(_x) <-- (n+1)*x;
100 # n_IsConstant*(_x) + _x <-- (n+1)*x;
101 # _x + - _y <-- x-y;
101 # _x + (- _y)/(_z) <-- x-(y/z);

Ted

P.S. I just reread my previous email and all those CAS's should have been CASs!

[Ted Kosan]

Steve wrote:

> Just wanted to say I think you've really nailed what is needed in
> secondary education.

We have mostly been working on MathPiper in "stealth mode" for the
past few years and this is the first time we have made a relatively
large group of mathematics educators aware of it. It is good to hear
that the direction we are taking MathPiper in may be a good one :-)

> I've only just started playing with the IDE, and I'm hoping that
> the Geogebra - MathPiper interface will simplify over time.

The GeoGebra-related code that is present in the worksheet_demo_1.mpw
file is definitely experimental in nature. More refined experimental
examples of MathPiper talking to GeoGebra are included in sections 10
and 11 of the "Exploring STEM with MathPiper" book. In these
sections, the undocumented GeoGebraPoint and GeoGebraPlot functions
are used to create and animate mathematical objects in GeoGebra.

However, this experimental code is just the beginning of what we hope
will evolve into a clean and powerful MathPiper - GeoGebra interface.
What we have been waiting for before proceeding with this work is to
locate some experienced GeoGebra users that have a programming
background who can help us determine what functionality should be in
this interface.

I would be very interested in hearing any ideas you may have on what
this interface should consist of :-)

Ted

[Steve Garlick]

>
> I would be very interested in hearing any ideas you may have on what
> this interface should consist of :-)
>
> Ted
>

Hi Ted,

I guess the first thing I'd like to see is a simple way to input to the Geogebra input box eg.

GeoGebraInput("y = x^2 + 2*x + 1");

One issue is then the profileration of syntax variations (i.e = and := for assignment). I think its important to reduce syntactic overload so that students spend more time on the content. Hence the beauty of Logo and Geogebra - very straightforward syntax.

While I believe debugging is a powerful problem solving activity, its harder to justify a lot of time in a maths classroom getting students to correct syntactic errors. (Not so in an ICT class).

Thanks again, the more time I spend with MathsPiper, the more I like it.

Regards, and thanks for the Xmas gift,

Steve Garlick.

[Dani Novak]

I just saw this and played for a while.  I must say it does look useful and quite easy to start up with because the user interface makes it easy to try things. I think it is a wonderful tool to be introduced in mah/programming classes in High schools and colleges.  One place to look are  united math/cs departments (we used to be united but sadly separated). 

 I think that one way to put effort that could go in parallel with the GeoGebra Interface efforts is to design other interfaces that could appeal to what students actually like doing.  Most folks in the GeoGebra Community will not go to the programming direction but if you were able to build the GeoGebra Interface within this system then other interfaces are possible also and then th challange would be to put this system in the background where most users will not know how it was build ad will just have fun using it while some who have programming skills will be able to add/modify the structures.

--Dani

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 2:37 AM, Ted Kosan <ted....@gmail.com> wrote:

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http://faculty.ithaca.edu/novak/
http://www.ithaca.edu/dani

[Maria Droujkova]

On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 2:17 AM, Ted Kosan <ted....@gmail.com> wrote:

Steve wrote:

> Just wanted to say I think you've really nailed what is needed in
> secondary education.

We have mostly been working on MathPiper in "stealth mode" for the
past few years and this is the first time we have made a relatively
large group of mathematics educators aware of it.  It is good to hear
that the direction we are taking MathPiper in may be a good one :-)

MathPiper is very interesting indeed! I am going to co-teach an art+math class this Spring and we will definitely look at it.

I am glad the supportive and constructive atmosphere of this interest group made your "coming out of stealth mode" happen here. It is an honor.

As for suggestions, and this may or may not be feasible, I would like a box of codelets that noobs can use to put something together. One example is Scratch with its Lego-like pieces. Another example is this simulation Ron Eglash sent to his ethnomathematics group a few weeks ago: http://www.ccd.rpi.edu/eglash/csdt/pcsdt/SB/

When I played with MathPiper, for example, I really liked that seashell surface. I watched the system animate it many times in a row, because of the beauty inside. Maybe if some pieces of code that govern its behavior were "more highlighted," a new person could start playing with variables easier.

However, you probably thought about such an approach and decided against it for a good reason. In any case, I would like to hear your thoughts.

Cheers,
MariaD

[Steve Garlick]

Hi Ted,

Just a query about the MathPiper STEM manual. You give the analogy that natural numbers have BIG gaps between them, while rational numbers have small gaps between them.

Isn't this giving students the wrong intuitions about infinite spaces, as partitionable into big and small? Such notions apply only to finite collections.

Regards,

Steve

[kirby urner]

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 11:37 PM, Ted Kosan <ted....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

My name is Ted Kosan and I am the project leader of the open source
MathPiper computer algebra system (CAS) project:

http://www.mathpiper.org/

Thank you Ted.

I've been going over the web site, screen shots and documentation

and am impressed by how far along this project seems to be.

The biggest weakness of many free and open source projects 

is often documentation and you seem to have that covered very

well at least at the introductory level.

I will mention your project on edu-sig, where I also hang out, as

a member of the Python using community.  Your sense that 

math and computer science have become artificially divided is

one we share.  One of the good aspects of STEM is it packs

things together in a hybrid or alloy that's stronger than each

subject studied separately.

Kirby

Kirby

[kirby urner]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 11:10 AM, Ted Kosan <ted....@gmail.com> wrote:

<< snip >>

 

The MathPiper adoption strategy is based on the realization that there
are alternative ways to introduce a CAS into secondary education other
than through the math curriculum.  I think the most promising of these
other ways is with an "introduction to computer programming" course.
With this computer programming-based approach, one is only faced with
a small gully to cross instead of a wide chasm.

Yes, it's fascinating to contemplate the many ways to fit it together

differently.  I imagine a world in which so much of the early math is

tinkering with funny angled pieces, leading up to biochemistry and

knowing so much about it.  They'd do more with origami, computer 

modeling, and play with animation tools, make spatial geometry 

cartoons.

The thing is, we don't need the "whole world" to make these lunges,

so like if Conrad was saying "lets all do the same experiment at 

once" I'd see no need for it.  

What we *do* need though, are more schools that advertise to the 

world as "experimental" and inviting teachers we know from the 

outset are trying new things -- that's why the kids who go there 

want to go, to see what they think of non-traditional pedagogy.  

Lots of ranking and scoring (a two way street).  We all learn from 

each other.  Lots of scholarships, could be "public schools" of a 

kind (officially supported by one or more host governments, like

an international school near Seattle).

Where do human and computer languages come close together

(in what disciplines?).  

The latter (computer languages) deal more with the "string" type 

than "regular math" does.  

Arithmetic and lower mathematics (graphing linear and polynomial 

equations, logs, trig, differentiation, integration) as taught through 

high school is not much interested in operations with strings of 

characters, hypertext, DNS lookup, routing.

'Godel Escher Bach' seemed somewhat alien because of this

difference.  That's thought of as "something else". 

It's not that higher math is unfamiliar with string processing, 

semantic web games, encoding regular expressions.  It's more

that our current mix of segments and topics is not based on

explaining "how things work".  Imagine a math class that was

all about explaining various technologies and their principles.

Lots of peeks into different walks of life.  How different that 

would be.  We'd seek to explain the Internet is some detail.

Also how banking works, stocks and bonds, not just this

supermarket checkout lane horsepucky stuff.

The standard math has pretty much given up "data structures" 

as well.  It might have arrays and of course matrices, but the 

very concept of "data structure" is mostly absent from the 

"analog math" track (alg-precalc-calc).  Polygons are at low 

ebb, polyhedra almost gone.  Hold up a cube and they'll 

call it a square, tell you it has four sides.  You just wanna 

go home and watch the 'Wizard of Oz' (anything to get out

of Kansas).

Except now iStuff, HDTV and 3D movies are popping out all over, 

so it's really "against the grain" to be skimping on polyhedra these 

days, right when we're ready to show them at their most colorful 

(like the ball at Times Square, like tree ornaments).  Why we're not

seeing more Rhombic Triacontahedra on the Discovery Channel 

I have no idea, but I suspect a conspiracy (smile).

 

What makes MathPiper different than most other CAS's is that it
currently emphasizes the computer programming aspects of a CAS over
the aspects of a CAS that are traditionally emphasized.

Ted

Hmmm....

If we tried to bring CAS in through the "language class" window, 

I'd probably start with something like 'Who Is Fourier?' from the 

LEX Institute (a human language learning group), or with 

regular expressions, or something for parsing sentences into

parts of speech.  

"What other grammatical expressions would say the same thing?"  

The ability to reword and thereby re-say, is important in the algebraic 

idea of "simplification" or simply in algebraic "transformations" that 

preserve an equality or relation, perhaps generate the same sequence 

of numbers (e.g. f(x) -> 1, 12, 42, 92, 162... now g(x) -> same output, 

so how to show equivalence of the two rules?  Not always easy, 

e.g. some of Ramanujan's have never been "explained" AFAIK)).

Sorry to write so densely there.  Just thinking about another 

alien curriculum, a favorite pass time.

Thanks again for MathPiper pointers.  Now I'm wondering about

the name.  Is it that you pipe between buffers, UNIX pipe character

an inspiration?  I should go back and look for something in About.

What's in a name, after all?

Kirby

[Ted Kosan]

Dani wrote:

>  I think that one way to put effort that could go in parallel with the
> GeoGebra Interface efforts is to design other interfaces that could appeal
> to what students actually like doing.  Most folks in the GeoGebra Community
> will not go to the programming direction but if you were able to build the
> GeoGebra Interface within this system then other interfaces are possible
> also and then th challange would be to put this system in the background
> where most users will not know how it was build ad will just have fun using
> it while some who have programming skills will be able to add/modify the
> structures.

MathPiper is indeed designed to be a computation engine which can be
used to drive multiple user interfaces. For example, MathPiper is one
of the computer algebra systems that drive the wonderful new
GeoGebraCAS application.

One of the reasons we started with MathPiperIDE for the initial user
interface is because the programming-oriented tools it contains allow
us to create experimental user interfaces relatively quickly. For
example, the MathPiper Console started as an experimental user
interface in MathPiperIDE.

One of our goals for MathPiper is to eventually have it serve as a
focus for educational research and grants and my thought is that user
interfaces would be a natural area to explore.

Ted

[Maria Droujkova]

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 1:39 AM, Ted Kosan <ted....@gmail.com> wrote:

One of our goals for MathPiper is to eventually have it serve as a
focus for educational research and grants and my thought is that user
interfaces would be a natural area to explore.

Ted

Ted, you may want to look at submitting a letter of inquiry here: http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources

[Ted Kosan]

Maria wrote:

>I am glad the supportive and constructive atmosphere of this interest
>group made your "coming out of stealth mode" happen here. It is
>an honor.

I have been reading the emails in this group since late summer and I
have indeed found it to be supportive and constructive. I have also
been amazed at the consistently high amount of effort you have devoted
to the website and to this group. Your reservoir of energy appears to
be boundless!

> As for suggestions, and this may or may not be feasible, I would like a box
> of codelets that noobs can use to put something together. One example is
> Scratch with its Lego-like pieces. Another example is this simulation Ron
> Eglash sent to his ethnomathematics group a few weeks ago:
> http://www.ccd.rpi.edu/eglash/csdt/pcsdt/SB/
>
> When I played with MathPiper, for example, I really liked that seashell
> surface. I watched the system animate it many times in a row, because of the
> beauty inside. Maybe if some pieces of code that govern its behavior were
> "more highlighted," a new person could start playing with variables easier.
>
> However, you probably thought about such an approach and decided against it
> for a good reason. In any case, I would like to hear your thoughts.

I think that the codelets and seashell-related ideas you came up with
are very interesting and doable. Neither myself nor the other main
MathPiper developer (Sherm Ostrowsky) have thought of an approach like
this and the reason is because neither one of us have a background in
mathematics education :-)

One goal we are attempting to achieve with the MathPiper project is to
eventually provide a low-cost way for educators to have their
MathPiper-related ideas implemented and MathPiperIDE is being
specifically designed to support this goal.

Instead of MathPiperIDE being an end-user application like
Mathematica, Maple, and wxMaxima, it is a messy workshop for quickly
creating experimental MathPiper-driven Java applications using
existing open source software. Thousands of open source Java
applications (like the ThreeDXploreMathJ and JFreeChart applications
which are currently in MathPiperIDE) have been developed since the
1990s and most of them are able to be made into MathPiperIDE plugins.

A typical Java application can be made into a MathPiperIDE plugin in
less than 5 hours. The ThreeDXploreMathJ plugin (with its beautiful
3D seashell!) took me an evening to turn into a MathPiperIDE plugin
and since that time it has been waiting patiently for mathematics
educators to think up useful things to do with it.

Unfortunately, Sherm and I do not have the extra time which is needed
to meet the programming needs of these experimental educational ideas
so we are working on ways to locate Java developers who are able to do
work like this and we are also coming up with ways to pay them.

Ted

[Ted Kosan]

Steve wrote:

> Just a query about the MathPiper STEM manual. You give the analogy that natural numbers have BIG gaps between them, while rational numbers have small gaps between them.
>
> Isn't this giving students the wrong intuitions about infinite spaces, as partitionable into big and small? Such notions apply only to finite collections.

I do not have a background in Mathematics (my background is in
technology) so when I wrote this section of the "Exploring STEM with
MathPiper" book, I used various mathematics education websites for
guidance. As an example, here is part of a forum discussion from "The
Math Forum" website which mentions big gaps existing between the
Integers:

"There are two types of gaps that I see. One is the big finite-sized
gaps like the ones in the integers, the gap between 0 and 1. The
other is the gap like you see in a Dedekind cut, where you can group
the fractions into two sets, one below something and one above
something, and then you find that there is no fraction equal to the
something! There must be gaps in the fractions, which can be filled
in by these somethings (like the square root of 2, or pi, for
example). When you fill them in, then you have the real numbers (and
in fact Dedekind cuts are often used, around junior year for math
majors in college, as an explanation of what the real numbers represent)."
(Doctor Schwa, The Math Forum,
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/68403.html)

Perhaps this view of gaps is wrong, or maybe I misinterpreted it?

The "Exploring STEM with MathPiper" book was written very quickly and
it has much room for improvement. One reason that I made it an open
source book is that I hoped that people with a stronger background in
the topics it covers than I have would eventually fix the errors it
contains and improve it. If you are interested in creating an
improved version of the numbers-related section of the book, feel free
to do so :-)

Ted

[kirby urner]

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 12:59 PM, Ted Kosan <ted....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve wrote:
>
>> Just a query about the MathPiper STEM manual. You give the analogy that natural numbers have BIG gaps between them, while rational numbers have small gaps between them.
>>
>> Isn't this giving students the wrong intuitions about infinite spaces, as partitionable into big and small? Such notions apply only to finite collections.
>
> I do not have a background in Mathematics (my background is in
> technology) so when I wrote this section of the "Exploring STEM with
> MathPiper" book, I used various mathematics education websites for
> guidance.  As an example, here is part of a forum discussion from "The
> Math Forum" website which mentions big gaps existing between the
> Integers:
>

My own background is in philosophy, Wittgenstein's especially, where
we have lots of foundations of mathematics stuff, in a kind of mix
with anthropology.

Imagine a tribe based in what we might call a discrete math metaphysics
that had no real numbers, nor perfect continua, nor "solids" in a
spatial geometry sense. Nothing touches anything else. It's all
discrete. Those kinds of translations. They use computers a lot
and have no trouble with expressions like sqrt(8) which they see as
an imperative, a verb (a process). What we call "real numbers" (nouns)
they say are "in the future" (some time dimension).

Anyway, just saying: it's possible to have digital math courses in
STEM that don't do that much with the real number type other than
to locate it historically in the progression N, Z, Q, R, C -- which is
roughly how our number systems have expanded in concentric sets,
the complex numbers (C) containing all the rest.

It'd be interesting to have a computer language which has only
the Complex type for all numbers, with floating points and
extended precision decimals considered subtypes of this common
ancestor class. But why stop there? Quaternions and octonians
could do even more. But now I'm sounding like John Baez, and
that's not who I am. I should just stick to integers. :)

Kirby

[Ted Kosan]

Kirby wrote

>The biggest weakness of many free and open source projects
>is often documentation and you seem to have that covered very
>well at least at the introductory level.

Two reasons (among many) for why we decided to provide relatively
solid free documentation in textbook form is so that 1) high school
students would not be forced to turn in the book after a class was
over and 2) so that college students could not sell the book back to
the bookstore.

>One of the good aspects of STEM is it packs
>things together in a hybrid or alloy that's stronger than each
>subject studied separately.

Another benefit of STEM is that a significant number of STEM-related
grants are also becoming available.

>Imagine a math class that was
>all about explaining various technologies and their principles.
>Lots of peeks into different walks of life. How different that
>would be. We'd seek to explain the Internet is some detail.
>Also how banking works, stocks and bonds, not just this
>supermarket checkout lane horsepucky stuff.

The MathPiper-based "Introduction to STEM Computer Programming" class
that our University has been offering through local high schools was
designed to introduce a nontraditional math class into high schools
without calling it a math class and without having to change the
existing math curriculum. The idea behind the class is to teach
beginning math-oriented computer programming during the first third of
the class (which is covered in the "Introduction to Programming with
MathPiper" book) and then to devote the remaining two thirds of the
class to having students use these programming skills to explore a
number of STEM-related topics.

The "Exploring STEM with MathPiper" book contains one group of STEM
topics that can be covered during the second part of the class, but
this book could easily be replaced with a wide range of alternative
STEM-related books which can contain topics such as the ones you
identify here.

When we visit high schools in order to advertise the existence of this
class, teachers and administrators are usually very open to the idea
of offering it at their schools. To me, one of the most valuable
things we have learned from the class is that this practical approach
to introducing a nontraditional math class into high schools actually
works.

Another potential benefit of the class is that it should make it
easier to introduce MathPiper into the existing math classes because
students already know how to program in MathPiper and so beginning
computer programming does not need to be taught in the math class.

>Now I'm wondering about
>the name. Is it that you pipe between buffers, UNIX pipe character
>an inspiration? I should go back and look for something in About.
>What's in a name, after all?

The name MathPiper is meant to bring to mind someone (or something)
like the Pied Piper
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Pied_Piper_with_Children.jpg),
except the goal of MathPiper is to attract students to mathematics and
mathematics-oriented programming :-) The name was chosen so that
stories could eventually be written about the Math Piper and all of
the wonderful things that can be done with computer algebra systems.

Ted

[kirby urner]

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 2:47 PM, Ted Kosan <ted....@gmail.com> wrote:

<< edits >>

> The MathPiper-based "Introduction to STEM Computer Programming" class
> that our University has been offering through local high schools was
> designed to introduce a nontraditional math class into high schools
> without calling it a math class and without having to change the
> existing math curriculum.  The idea behind the class is to teach
> beginning math-oriented computer programming during the first third of
> the class (which is covered in the "Introduction to Programming with
> MathPiper" book) and then to devote the remaining two thirds of the
> class to having students use these programming skills to explore a
> number of STEM-related topics.
>

A worthy approach. Minimum disturbance, follows the prime directive
(per Star Trek).

My trajectory in Oregon, as chronicled in my blogs (though mostly
in an untagged, scrambled format), was to start with a state lobby
group, Software Association of Oregon, and agitate for "equal time"
for discrete math topics.

In legalese, this means we wanted more computer science type
topics to count towards the math requirement, which is three years
for a high school diploma in Oregon.

We had a workshop at Sherwood HS with talented teachers from
around the state, Aug 7 2009, and plotted our strategy. I showed
up with a co-teacher, LW, these days pioneering an outdoorsy
STEM curriculum (lots of focus on energy and its transformations
and conservation).

After that meeting, I returned to my perch at Saturday Academy,
a nonprofit backed by the Silicon Forest to offer short term
opportunities.

But we can't make up for the lack of "digital math" as a track.
Perhaps eventually four years in duration, for those wishing.

Lots of GIS/GPS. Lots of getting outdoors.

> The "Exploring STEM with MathPiper" book contains one group of STEM
> topics that can be covered during the second part of the class, but
> this book could easily be replaced with a wide range of alternative
> STEM-related books which can contain topics such as the ones you
> identify here.
>

Yes, your ecosystem seems to be built to attract collaborators,
with lots of swappable components.

I'm not familiar with JEdit in terms of Unicode capabilities but I expect
their really good and that many fonts are available.

I know that in Python world, we've been experimenting with
top-level function names not in any Latin-1 language.

Whereas many schools prefer to stick with "Romanji" for STEM,
that would be impractical in Japan and Korea, which have already
adapted their respective languages to host and manage these
topics. Having your variable and function names be outside
of Latin-1 might be a niche feature of some CAS systems,
probably already is.

> When we visit high schools in order to advertise the existence of this
> class, teachers and administrators are usually very open to the idea
> of offering it at their schools.  To me, one of the most valuable
> things we have learned from the class is that this practical approach
> to introducing a nontraditional math class into high schools actually
> works.
>
> Another potential benefit of the class is that it should make it
> easier to introduce MathPiper into the existing math classes because
> students already know how to program in MathPiper and so beginning
> computer programming does not need to be taught in the math class.
>

The proposed strategy in Oregon per this committed group I was
talking about was to develop a workflow that would get teachers
going through a PSU program (PSU = Portland State).

They would self select and get on-the-job training as a part of the
state's stimulus budget. Or maybe we'd enroll more private
sponors (Flextegrity LLC was one, Saturday Academy had
a bunch).

The problem of course is that administrators feel straitjacketed
by the state standards, such as these may have been adopted
thanks to earlier lobbying.

We have some standards for discrete math on the books already
in Oregon, and could put our prototype math course (not a full
four years at the outset) right next to statistics and trig as
an additional math elective (for credit, counts toward the three
years).

But the climate against "trying something new" seems pretty
thick around the state, though is thawing in some zip codes
(97214 for example).

Sometimes I post updates on this list regarding how it's all going.

Mostly I just chronicle in my journals.

Meeting with Congressman Wu and his staff. Joining forces
with Speech & Debate culture. Teaming up with this or that
player, perhaps known as an MVP (but only within small
circles). It's been an adventure.

>
>>Now I'm wondering about
>>the name.  Is it that you pipe between buffers, UNIX pipe character
>>an inspiration?  I should go back and look for something in About.
>>What's in a name, after all?
>
> The name MathPiper is meant to bring to mind someone (or something)
> like the Pied Piper
> (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Pied_Piper_with_Children.jpg),
> except the goal of MathPiper is to attract students to mathematics and
> mathematics-oriented programming :-)  The name was chosen so that
> stories could eventually be written about the Math Piper and all of
> the wonderful things that can be done with computer algebra systems.
>
> Ted
>

Oh of course << slaps forehead >>.

I did post a blurb about MathPiper on edu-sig, as promised. Lots of
teachers hanging out on that list, some doing rather creative things.

Many are not based in the USA either, so are maybe freer to just
try stuff.

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2010-December/010144.html

MathPiper may gain a big following in South Africa. Lots of great
coders they tell me. Or Budapest? I never know where I'm gonna
here from next. One of my last major presentations was in Vilnius,
Lithuania.

Kirby

[Maria Droujkova]

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Ted Kosan <ted....@gmail.com> wrote:

Maria wrote:
>
> When I played with MathPiper, for example, I really liked that seashell
> surface. I watched the system animate it many times in a row, because of the
> beauty inside. Maybe if some pieces of code that govern its behavior were
> "more highlighted," a new person could start playing with variables easier.
>
> However, you probably thought about such an approach and decided against it
> for a good reason. In any case, I would like to hear your thoughts.

I think that the codelets and seashell-related ideas you came up with
are very interesting and doable.  Neither myself nor the other main
MathPiper developer (Sherm Ostrowsky) have thought of an approach like
this and the reason is because neither one of us have a background in
mathematics education :-)

Any system demanding correct spelling will cause newbies frustration. The younger and less computer savvy the audience, the more this is an issue. Any rudimentary analog interface that allows simple actions without typing (buttons, codelets, sliders) will go a very long way toward wide acceptance of the product, because newbies can actually do something.

Any simple cause-effect actions "I try to click here and this is what happens" are fun. However, when such "analog changes" have two-way connection with the code, it immediately focuses people's attention on the code and helps them learn.

One goal we are attempting to achieve with the MathPiper project is to
eventually provide a low-cost way for educators to have their
MathPiper-related ideas implemented and MathPiperIDE is being
specifically designed to support this goal.

Instead of MathPiperIDE being an end-user application like
Mathematica, Maple, and wxMaxima, it is a messy workshop for quickly
creating experimental MathPiper-driven Java applications using
existing open source software.  Thousands of open source Java
applications (like the ThreeDXploreMathJ and JFreeChart applications
which are currently in MathPiperIDE) have been developed since the
1990s and most of them are able to be made into MathPiperIDE plugins.

A typical Java application can be made into a MathPiperIDE plugin in
less than 5 hours.  The ThreeDXploreMathJ plugin (with its beautiful
3D seashell!) took me an evening to turn into a MathPiperIDE plugin
and since that time it has been waiting patiently for mathematics
educators to think up useful things to do with it.

Unfortunately, Sherm and I do not have the extra time which is needed
to meet the programming needs of these experimental educational ideas
so we are working on ways to locate Java developers who are able to do
work like this and we are also coming up with ways to pay them.

Ted

This is incredible! How are you going about it, Ted? Something like Google Summer of Code, or maybe Hewlett Foundation's OER call? http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources

Where are you talking with people who created ThreeDXploreMathJ and others like them?

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

[Ted Kosan]

Maria wrote:

>>Unfortunately, Sherm and I do not have the extra time which is needed
>>to meet the programming needs of these experimental educational ideas
>>so we are working on ways to locate Java developers who are able to do
>>work like this and we are also coming up with ways to pay them.
>

> How are you going about it, Ted? Something like Google
> Summer of Code, or maybe Hewlett Foundation's OER call?
> http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources

Our funding strategy is based on helping to solve the economic
problems that are currently being experienced world-wide. These
problems are causing people to finally realize that economic
prosperity is heavily dependent on the STEM disciplines and
subsequently a significant amount of financial resources are now being
channeled into STEM education.

Conrad Wolfram mentioned the strong link between STEM and economic
prosperity in his talk:

"We have to make sure that we can move our economies forward, and also
our societies, based on the idea that people can really feel
mathematics. This isn't some optional extra. And the country that does
this first will, in my view, will leapfrog others in achieving a new
economy<snip>"

However, instead of this idea only being applied at the country level,
I think it also applies to lower levels, such as states, counties, and
cities. All of these entities, along with a number of others, are
potential sources for funds.

What makes MathPiper well-suited for capturing part of the significant
amount of financial resources that are currently being channeled into
STEM education is that it is designed to be much more than just an
educational application. MathPiper is also designed to be a STEM
problem solving tool that high school students can take with them to
college and then into the workplace after they graduate. I think that
this ability to track MathPiper's positive effects from the classroom
and into the workplace makes it especially attractive as a target for
funding.

Part of the reason we have been able to make MathPiper into a
practical STEM problem solving tool is because Sherm has a PhD in
Engineering and I have a Masters degree in Technology. This covers
the 'T' and 'E' in STEM. One reason we approached this group was to
locate some people to help us with the 'M' part of STEM :-)

As for finding programmers to do the work, this should be relatively
easy because Java is currently a very popular programming language
(http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html).
Finding programmers is not that difficult if money to pay them is
available. The challenging parts include:

1) Having well-documented software so that newly-hired programmers can
understand it and start to extend it in a minimal amount of time.

2) Having well-defined requirements available which describe the work
that these programmers will be expected to do.

3) Having processes in place which educators can follow in order to
develop the requirements for the software they envision.

> Where are you talking with people who created ThreeDXploreMathJ and others
> like them?

The ThreeDXploreMathJ application
(http://3d-xplormath.org/j/index.html) was created as part of National
Science Foundation DUE grant #0514781. After the application was
finished, I think the development group disbanded so I never talked to
anyone on the development group. I just downloaded the source code
and placed it into MathPiperIDE. Therefore, any enhancements that may
need to be done to ThreeDXploreMathJ will need to be done by members
of the MathPiper project :-)

Ted

[Maria Droujkova]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Ted Kosan <ted....@gmail.com> wrote:

Maria wrote:
>

> How are you going about it, Ted? Something like Google
> Summer of Code, or maybe Hewlett Foundation's OER call?
> http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources

What makes MathPiper well-suited for capturing part of the significant
amount of financial resources that are currently being channeled into
STEM education is that it is designed to be much more than just an
educational application.  MathPiper is also designed to be a STEM
problem solving tool that high school students can take with them to
college and then into the workplace after they graduate.  I think that
this ability to track MathPiper's positive effects from the classroom
and into the workplace makes it especially attractive as a target for
funding.

Interesting! How are grown-ups using it now? Or kids for work tasks? I think "maker and hacker" people may want this for something?
http://makezine.com/
 

> Where are you talking with people who created ThreeDXploreMathJ and others
> like them?

The ThreeDXploreMathJ application
(http://3d-xplormath.org/j/index.html) was created as part of National
Science Foundation DUE grant #0514781.  After the application was
finished, I think the development group disbanded so I never talked to
anyone on the development group.  I just downloaded the source code
and placed it into MathPiperIDE.  Therefore, any enhancements that may
need to be done to ThreeDXploreMathJ will need to be done by members
of the MathPiper project :-)

Ted

I am yet to find a good way to ask this question... But I already found and joined your Google group. Here it is: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mathpiper-user

Cheers,
MariaD

[Ted Kosan]

Maria wrote:

> Interesting! How are grown-ups using it now? Or kids for work tasks?

I teach in the Department of Engineering Technologies at Shawnee State
University in Ohio and most of our students obtain jobs in industry
when they graduate.

Many of the companies these students work for use applications like
MiniTab for Statistical Process Control (SPC,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_process_control):

http://www.minitab.com/en-US/default.aspx

And a number of the companies use MathCad to perform
engineering-related calculations:

http://www.ptc.com/products/mathcad/

Our graduates are starting to use MathPiper in places where they
typically would have used applications like MiniTab or MathCad.

Ted

[Maria Droujkova]

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 2:29 AM, Ted Kosan <ted....@gmail.com> wrote:

Maria wrote:

> Interesting! How are grown-ups using it now? Or kids for work tasks?

I teach in the Department of Engineering Technologies at Shawnee State
University in Ohio and most of our students obtain jobs in industry
when they graduate.

Our graduates are starting to use MathPiper in places where they
typically would have used applications like MiniTab or MathCad.

Ted

Ted, this is fantastic. You can probably guess what I will ask next - is there a place where these people upload their MathPiper files for sharing?

Out of all existing depositories, my favorite interfaces are Scratch and WordPress plugins. Scratch has one-click uploading and downloading/opening, with big friendly buttons, and it keeps track of all previous authors in remixed applets. These three functionality items are very useful for social aspects. I've seen little kids following "previous authors" to look at their other work, for example.

[Ted Kosan]

Maria wrote:

>You can probably guess what I will ask next - is
> there a place where these people upload their MathPiper files for sharing?
>
> Out of all existing depositories, my favorite interfaces are Scratch and
> WordPress plugins. Scratch has one-click uploading and downloading/opening,
> with big friendly buttons, and it keeps track of all previous authors in
> remixed applets.

There is not yet a place where people can upload MathPiper files in
order to share them, but hopefully a service like this will be created
someday.

The Scratch code sharing system is very nice and perhaps it would be a
good system to emulate.

Ted

[Maria Droujkova]

Ted,

I know it is relatively easy to use existing platforms to make an online code depository. It is probably significantly harder to make the depository "talk" to your software in the way Scratch does. I am CCing Karen Brennan, the wonderful community manager at Scratch who was the host of a Math 2.0 event about their Lifelong Kindergarten last year, and Andres Monroy-Hernandes, their community interface developer. Here is a good short overview of how the platform works, by the way, with a slide show from Andres.

Happy holidays!

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
http://naturalmath.com

[Paul Libbrecht]

May I offer the help of the intergeo platform?

I brainstormed about such an interface at:

http://i2geo.net/xwiki/bin/view/Sandbox/i2geo-as-storage

although it was for another web-service.

paul