Wolframalpha graph5/7/2023 I would never do that now that I have a calculator that can do those things for me. I used trig tables and interpolation to find values of trig functions. I learned to compute logarithms using log tables. Why are we asking students to only do things that can be more easily accomplished with technology? Why aren’t we asking students to do things the technology cannot? If we are concerned about students understanding mathematical concepts, shouldn’t our exams include/focus on conceptual thinking? I am not 100% certain where I heard this line, but I think it was at AMATYC from the inspirational Fred Feldon ( follow him on Twitter) from Coastline College. If W|A alone can pass your exam, it’s a bad exam. I can remember many times in grad school where I had to work through a proof line by line before I could really understand what was going on, and the same thing can happen for our students.Ģ) We need to shift from “computational” exams to conceptual exams. And for a student who has no access to a tutor or other help, the Wolfram|Alpha student subscription gives a student access to all of the steps and that can help a student to figre out what is going on. And so can taking the answer and trying to work backward. And while that does not mean having Wolfram|Alpha simply do your homework, it can mean finding a way to use Wolfram|Alpha to increase your learning.įor example, if a student does not know how to solve a problem, getting an answer from Wolfram|Alpha and trying to piece together a path to that answer can be an effective strategy. And we must discuss how students can get the most out of their homework. As instructors we need to let our students know why we assign homework: to improve student learning. ![]() Many students work under the point of view that homework is a way to accumulate points and improve their chances of passing the class. I feel that we often assume that students know why they do homework and that they will do it in the most beneficial way, but that is a mistake. Here goes …ġ) We need to make sure that students understand that HW is a learning tool, not just something that earns points. It will be great for any queries based on statistics whether weather, housing, unemployment, crime, you name it.Last week I came across a Wired article: Wolfram|Alpha (& AI) Is Making It Easier To Cheat, and reading the article brought so many thoughts to mind about teaching mathematics in today’s world. Call me kinky, but those charts and graphs are dead sexy. There are some screenshots here that give a preview of what will become available. In response to “how far is the Moon from Earth,” WolframAlpha will calculate the exact distance based on an algorithm that computes the ever-changing distance between the two bodies. If you type “LDL 120 male 33,” it will adjust the results to focus on that gender and age group. If you type “LDL 120,” it will return a graph showing the distribution of cholesterol levels among the United States population, and display the percentage of people above and below that figure. When a user types in a query, WolframAlpha tries to determine the relevant area of knowledge and find the answers, often by performing calculations on its data. Instead, its “knowledge base” is made up of reams and reams of data - ranging from the kinds of facts you would find in a World Almanac, to highly specialized data from physics and other sciences - that some 100 employees at Wolfram Research have gathered, verified and organized over several years. As the New York Times reports: For starters, it does not gather data from the Web. So it’s maybe of more interest to journalists and writers/researchers than ordinary Web users, but maybe not. ![]() It’s based on sorted, verified data, and will never tell you what Britney is up to or what the current hot starlet looks like naked, but it will give you graphs and charts of, you know, facts. ![]() It seems to be still in beta, but Wolfram Alpha is a hugely promising web-search tool that will complement Google and Wikipedia.
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