Talk:Computing course ideas

From BenningtonWiki

Joe,

I'm not sure where this would go, but how about the algorithmic thinking class we started talking about last term?

--Reid

Oh yeah, I wanted to do that with a philosophy-type person, as a co-teach. Thanks for reminding me. -- Joe

Joe, I'm not sure if this would be part of your understanding math and algorithms course, but it would be possible to teach or co-teach with someone like Zimba a course on using computer models in math to describe real-world phenomena?

I actually don't really know what I'm talking about, except to say that I was reading about operations research, which is heavy on optimization, and they use a lot of computer modeling. And also it appears in the sciences and I'm assuming social science disciplines as well. I wonder if there would be an equivalent course at another college where I could look at.

--Reid

Hi Joe, me again. This idea comes out of reading Glen's book on the history of trigonometry (before the invention of symbolic mathematical notation . . . yikes!). One of the great problems of trigonometry is to develop the sine table for every degree. One reaches a point where either you make approximations geometrically, or iterative means must be employed to achieve an acceptable degree of accuracy.

Perhaps this is related to the idea above, but computers have made doing math a lot easier from computation of transcenental functions to doing geometry on the computer. Would it be a valuable course to look at computing as it helped math(/science/engineering) historically? Actually, as I think about it, this may be a lot more math than programming. --Reid