Session Schedule: MAA PREP Workshop

Summer 2011

Each day is a total of four hours online, broken into two 2-hour sessions. Please get set up in Elluminate a few minutes before the start time, paying special attention to the guidelines (especially about your session name and headphones). We will post links to recordings of each session to the course email list shortly after the conclusion of the session.

• Session I: 8-10 Pacific, 11-1 Eastern
• Session II: Noon-2 Pacific, 3-5 Eastern

Homework and Office Hours are listed after all the sessions.

• Tuesday, May 24

• Tuesday, June 7

• Tuesday, June 14

• Tuesday, June 21

Tuesday, May 24

Our goal on the first day is to get everybody comfortable enough in the notebook interface that they can begin to productively explore their own interests in Sage independently. So we will concentrate on basic use and the various ways to get help and learn more.

Questions are encouraged! With that in mind, note that we have ample time for addressing questions that come up during the presentations. You should feel free to message in Elluminate anything that comes to mind, and we'll be sure to address as many as possible during the actual session.

Session I - Getting Started

• Introductions: Organizers and Participants (Karl-Dieter, 30 min)

• Review (and expand on) "PREP Intro Tutorial" worksheet (Karl-Dieter, 45 min)

  • Evaluating commands
  • Symbolic functions
  • Finding Help and Documentation through the notebook
  • Annotating your Worksheets
• Short Break
• Questions (Jason, 20 min)
• Technology in the Classroom roundtable (Jason, 20 min)
  • How have you used math software in the classroom?
  • What is your goal in using math software in class?
  • How much should students interact with the software? (Labs? In-class demonstrations? Homework? Tests?)
  • How do you grade technology assignments?
  • How do you adjust your teaching style when students are expected to use math software?

  • Notes from the discussion

Session II - Sage Community

• Welcome Back (Jason, 5 min)
• Resources (Jason, 25 min)

  • ask.sagemath.org

  • Help in the notebook

  • Google Groups

    • sage-support

    • sage-edu

  • MAA list (versus Google Groups)

  • www.sagemath.org (try the search)

    • Reference Material

    • Sage Reference (standalone)

    • Sage Tutorial (standalone)

    • Interact Construction Documentation

  • Sage wiki (Interacts, Quickrefs)

    • Sage Quick Reference (Wiki)

    • Sage Interacts (Wiki)

  • www.sagenb.org (published worksheets)

• Short Break

• Review "Sage Tutorial for Symbolics and Plotting" (Karl-Dieter, 40 min)

  • Symbolic Expressions
  • Basics of Two-Dimensional Plotting
  • Basics of Three-Dimensional Plotting
• Questions (Karl-Dieter, 15 min)
• Interacts (Jason Grout, 15 min)

  • Worksheet showing step-by-step interact creation

  • Worksheet showing many different interact ideas

• Homework (Karl-Dieter, 10 min)
  • Preparation for next sessions
  • Next Tutorial(s)
  • Pre-Workshop Survey for MAA
• Announcements (Jason, 5 min)
  • Office Hours
  • June Sessions

Session Links

• John Perry's Mathematical Computing Course

• Beezer's TeX Resources (bottom half of "Links")

• William Stein's Sage/Mathematical History

• Sage's Python to C translator

• Setting up a Sage server

• R Studio (not Sage, but an R interface)

• SageTeX

• tex2sws for making LaTeX become Sage Worksheets

• sws2tex for making nicely typeset output from Sage Worksheets

• Magma and Sage interface

• Sage mode in Emacs

• Sage on Windows

• The worksheet shared with everybody

Tuesday, June 7

Our goal on the second day of sessions is to start deepening your knowledge of Sage, and to give opportunities to share ideas about technology and how to use worksheets which you have.

Session I - Calculus

• Welcome Back: Organizers and Participants (Karl-Dieter, 10 min)

• Review (and expand on) "PREP Calculus Tutorial" worksheet (Karl-Dieter, 30 min)

  • Calc I, II, III
  • Limits, Diff'l. Calc, Integral Calc., Multivariate
• Questions (Karl-Dieter, 10 min)
• Short Break
• Technology in the Classroom discussion (30 min)
  • As a tool, not a crutch - ideas?
  • Models for dissemination

  • Notes From the Discussion

• Classroom-type demo: Chaos and Calculus (Karl-Dieter, 10 min)

• Questions and end (Jason, 15 min)

Session II - Plotting, Demos, and Programming

• Welcome Back (Karl-Dieter, 5 min)

• Introductory Programming (Karl-Dieter, 25 min)

  • Motivated by linear algebra
  • "dot" method notation
  • Loops and behavior/use of "range"
  • Set Notation, List Comprehension
  • Defining functions with "def"
  • Renaming 'Gotchas'
• Questions (Karl-Dieter, 5 min)

• Classroom demos: Linear Algebra (Jason, 15 min)

• Classroom demos: Multivariable (Jason, 15 min)

• Short Break
• Participant demo worksheets! (25 min)

  • Making tables

  • Percentage of Area of a Square

• Advanced 2D plotting (Jason, 30 min)

• Announcements (Jason, 5 min)
  • Office Hours
  • Next Session
  • Homework

Tuesday, June 14

Our goal on the third day of sessions is to give more depth to how to use Sage in various areas one might teach. We also aim to continue giving more depth in areas like plotting and basic programming.

Session I - Getting In-Depth, Part 1

• Welcome Back (Jason, 5 min)

• Lagrange multipliers demo (Jason, 10 min)

• Numerical Analysis (Jason, 30 min)

  • Quickstart

  • Some more demos

• Differential Equations Quickstart (Karl-Dieter, 15 min)

• Break

• Re-introduction to Creating Interacts (Jason, 15 min)

• Discussion: Specific techniques for technology in classroom (30 min)
  • Introducing a new topic in class
  • In the Lab environment

  • Notes from discussion

Session II - Getting In-Depth, Part 2

• Welcome (Karl-Dieter, 5 min)

• Graph Theory Quickstart (Karl-Dieter, 10 min)

• SageTeX (Jason, 20 min)

  • Slides

  • Tex Source zip file

• Number Theory (Karl-Dieter, 25 min)

  • Quickstart

  • A couple demos

• Break

• Statistics quickstart (Karl-Dieter, 10 min)

• A brief history of Sage (William Stein, 15 min)

  • Link to longer history from mathematical/software viewpoint

• Participant worksheet sharing (20 min)

  • Strange functions

  • Graphing transformations in college algebra

  • Pitfalls in Calculus I

  • Poisson Distributions interact

• Homework and wrap-up (Jason, 5 min)

Session Links

• Advanced Python iterators

• Sage Trac ticket for making it more obvious how to do power series solutions to DEs

• Cool Monthly article on polynomial non-convergence

• Pictures, including nice ones with Tachyon

• An example of an animation with Tachyon

• Documentation for how WeBWorK is most effective

Tuesday, June 21

Our goal on the last day of sessions is to consolidate our gains, give lots of opportunity to share your work, and address some final issues like setting up a server. We'll also have an opportunity for addressing things not already discussed.

Session I - Useful Advanced Issues

• Welcome back (Karl-Dieter, 5 min)
• Final classroom nuts and bolts (40 min)
  • Ideas discussion (moderated by Karl-Dieter)
    • Ideas for server or lab
    • Grading and/or sharing

      • LiveCD

    • Presentation ideas

    • Books using Sage

      • William Stein's book

    • More ideas?

    • Notes from this

  • Setting up a server (Jason)

    • Where to find resources

    • Q&A

• Break

• Abstract Algebra quickstart (Karl-Dieter, 15 min)

• Advanced 3d plotting Parts One and Two (Jason, 15 min)

• Embedding other things into worksheets (Jason, 10 min)

  • Geogebra
  • Flash
  • Applets
  • WeBWorK

• WeBWorK (Michael Gage, 15 min)

  • Link to slides

  • Status report on Sage/WeBWorK integration(8 minutes in and 25 minutes in)

Session II - Participants Participate

• Welcome back (Jason, 5 min)

• Advanced programming (Jason, 20 min)

  • lists vs. tuples
  • list comprehensions and generators
  • slicing lists and matrices
  • dictionaries
  • lambda functions
• Brief break
• Participant demos (moderated by Karl-Dieter, 65 min)
  • As many of these as we can get to!

  • Mortgage calculation

  • Exploring transformations in precalc

  • Quadric Surfaces

  • Continued Fractions

  • "Our Big Theorem"

  • Plane and Space Curves

  • Normal Distribution

  • Projective Coordinates on the Complex Plane

  • Expectation Worksheet

• Brief break
• Preview of future Sage enhancements (Jason, 10 min)
• Wrap-up (Karl-Dieter, 10 min)
  • Post-Workshop Survey - watch your email
  • Mathfest (joint with WeBWorK and MAA)
    • Short Demo
    • Should be a table
    • Something at Web-SIGMAA meeting
  • Joint Math Meetings
    • Sage table, possibly with WW and/or MAA
  • Video links from UTMOST Sage Days conference

    • Most video and slides and worksheets are here

      • Including ones from Jason, Karl-Dieter, Jason's little brother Ryan, and former PREP participant John Travis

      • Dan Drake's SageTeX video is awesome

    • The WeBWorK videos here (Wednesday) may be helpful

  • Servers for fall use
  • Follow up reports about how used in classroom
    • Keep track!
    • Watch for emails!

Session Links

• Documentation for Python sorted() function

• Python string formatting

• Another string formatting link

• Getting data from the Internet in Python

• More multivariable interact ideas

Office Hours

Please connect as usual in Elluminate, and give the organizer a minute or two to recognize you if there is nobody else around, or they are busy with someone else. ("Raising your hand" should provide an audible alert on the organizer's end.) See the guide for information on sharing your worksheet out via Elluminate. This might be a useful way for us to help you with problems.

And of course feel free to ask any questions on the MAA list for the workshop, or support question on [email protected]

• Between introductory session and intensive sessions

• Between the various intensive sessions

Homework

• For Tuesday, June 7th

  • Try the calculus tutorial!

  • Make a new worksheet where you explore some subject you care about.
    • This is a nice way to try the help facilities.
  • Email the MAA PREP list with at least one question.
    • This could include starting a discussion about pedagogy!
  • If you would like, suggest topics for the next session.
• For Tuesday, June 14th
  • Try out two of the "Quickstart" worksheets.

    • Differential Equations

    • Abstract Algebra

    • Number Theory

    • Statistics and Distributions

    • Graph Theory and Combinatorics

    • Multivariable calculus

    • Linear Algebra

    • Numerical Analysis

  • Continue any discussions you want on the list about technology.
  • Continue to work on a couple worksheets demonstrating what you want to show.
• For Tuesday, June 21st
  • Let us know about additional topics for the last time
  • Pick at least one worksheet you might want to share for next time
    • (Won't be required, but strongly encouraged)
• For the future

  • Meet up at MathFest!

  • Use Sage in your classes
  • Joint Meetings get-together
  • More