My real point in using Maxima in the example below is that Maxima isn't currently being taught in high school, so schools may be wasting valuable time (as usual) teaching the wrong things. The way math is taught today is analogous to teaching you how to drive by walking 50 miles to your destination and taking your car apart. Where's the part where you actually learn how to drive? As cool as determinants and eigenvalues are (to me), these topics aren't going to be interesting to most people until they've pushed the limits of what they can accomplish without understanding them. At 02:22 AM 1/1/2015, Adam P. Goucher wrote:
Yes, you've taken the problem and expressed it in a form such that it can be mechanically solved by an automaton. In the words of Sakunthala Panditharatne, `the parts of coding that can be automated aren't coding'; I guess this generalises to any creative or intellectual pursuit:
https://twitter.com/sknthla/status/534848751417171969
Sincerely,
Adam P. Goucher
Sent: Thursday, January 01, 2015 at 1:46 AM From: "Henry Baker" <hbaker1@pipeline.com> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [math-fun] Is Algebra Necessary?
Cute!
But is what I'm doing below "algebra" ?
Maxima 5.28.0-2 http://maxima.sourceforge.net using Lisp GNU Common Lisp (GCL) GCL 2.6.8 (a.k.a. GCL) Distributed under the GNU Public License. See the file COPYING. Dedicated to the memory of William Schelter. The function bug_report() provides bug reporting information. (%i1) x+y=2000000; (%o1) y + x = 2000000 (%i2) 6*x+15*y=15000000; (%o2) 15 y + 6 x = 15000000 (%i3) globalsolve:true; (%o3) true (%i4) solve([%o1,%o2],[x,y]); 5000000 1000000 (%o4) [[x : -------, y : -------]] 3 3 (%i5) x/y; (%o5) 5 (%i6)
Rentals:Sales::5:1
At 05:14 PM 12/31/2014, Hans Havermann wrote:
Dan Meyer twittered yesterday: "So glad the @nytimes found an answer to their question from 2012, 'Is Algebra Necessary?'" pointing to this Sunday, Michael Ciepy, NY Times information piece:
"'The Interview' generated roughly $15 million in online sales and rentals during its first four days of availability, Sony Pictures said on Sunday. Sony did not say how much of that total represented $6 digital rentals versus $15 sales. The studio said there were about two million transactions over all."