jarnold

Dr. Jerry Arnold

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18 years, 195 days
Valentine Rural High School
Teacher

MaplePrimes Activity


These are replies submitted by jarnold

@Carl Love 

I primarily want to do numbers, but it seems the same structure would also work for polynomials. To try and describe it, I'm looking to enter the vertical and horizontal line that separates the dividend from the divisor on the side and the quotient on the top. I just want to give the students the dividend and the divisor and they then solve the problem.

Calculators have so many advantages over computers that I don't see them dying out anytime soon. In addition to the portability issue, a GC offers much greater speed and convenience. The major functions students want to use are right on the 'surface' of the interface. For 99% of the problems in the high school physics classes I teach, I can calculate the answers much faster on my HP calculator than I can type-in and solve the problem in Maple. Sure, Maple can do symbolic math. But for so much of what my students need to do, Maple is overkill. In the world I live in, students have access to computers when needed but don't carry one around all day. For computers, the large footprint, battery life, inconvenient keyboard entry, cost, portability and others issues mean that my students will continue to use calculators for the forseeable future. I'm not bashing Maple because I think it is a very useful program. But it's a different product and serves a different purpose than a hand-held calculator. They will both be with us for a long time.
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