Question about CAS and Graphing

[Han]

(11-24-2014 01:00 PM)Gerald H Wrote:  I wonder about the encouragement of mathematical ability & problem solving - Should we train our students to behave like trick dogs & jump through the hoops of the difficult software terrain or - just possibly worth consideration - mitigate their problems by learning from them to remove the difficulties which the experienced teacher has come to terms with during the sad course of his professionalization.

What are you going on about? We teach them the software because the real world doesn't typically give them hand-crafted problems that they can easily solve by hand. They start as early as calculus and continue to learn about the software in upper level courses such as applied mathematics or numerical analysis. Students are taught how to use Mathematica; they're taught how to use Maple, and Matlab, and several others (depending on their major). If they choose to use both, we also teach them how to do that. They're also taught how to use Maple's features such as 2D input. And they're also taught that Maple can handle 1D input as well. And should students choose to mix the two, we also teach them about the nuances of doing that as well. Should they choose (for themselves) to use multiple software applications, they will inevitably run into situations where the syntax from one gets accidentally used in the other (as a simple example). Are you suggesting we teach only one and not the other so as to avoid these issues that come up time and time again? Edit: here's one reason not to stick to a single CAS: http://www.ams.org/notices/201410/rnoti-p1249.pdf

As for the end of your post, surely you can do better to add to this discussion than to post innuendos.