Session Schedule: MAA PREP Workshop

Summer 2012

Each day is a total of four hours online, broken into two 2-hour sessions. Please get set up in Blackboard Collaborate 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, June 26

• Tuesday, July 10

• Tuesday, July 17

• Tuesday, July 24

Tuesday, June 26

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 Blackboard Collaborate 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 (Dan, 20 min)
• Technology in the Classroom roundtable (Dan, 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 - More on getting started

• Welcome Back (Dan, 5 min)
• Resources (Dan, 15 min)

  • ask.sagemath.org

  • Google Groups

    • sage-support

    • sage-edu

  • MAA list (versus Google Groups)
• The Sage Cell server (Dan, 15 min)
• 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 (Dan Drake, 15 min)
• Homework (Karl-Dieter, 10 min)
  • Preparation for next sessions
  • Next Tutorial(s)
  • Pre-Workshop Survey for MAA

  • Homework Link

• Announcements (Dan, 5 min)

  • Office Hours

  • July Sessions

Session Links

• Tom Judson's Sage-enabled abstract algebra text

• Gallian's abstract algebra text GAP resources

• Doerr and Lavasseur open source Discrete Math book with Sage

• Download Sage

• Download Sage for Linux

• Sage on Windows

• More info about Sage on Windows

• MathJax for wonderful typesetting on the web

• tex2sws for making LaTeX become Sage Worksheets

• Setting up a Sage server

• Sage cell server link

• Sage cell at KAIST

• Sample Sage cell short link

• Natural language interface with Sage

• xkcd on the importance of labeling your axes

• Interact documentation

• Level surfaces using new Jmol

Other potentially useful 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

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

• SageTeX

• sws2tex for making nicely typeset output from Sage Worksheets

• Magma and Sage interface

• Sage mode in Emacs

Tuesday, July 10

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 (Dan, 10 min)

• Review (and expand on) "PREP Calculus Tutorial" worksheet (Dan, 30 min)

  • Calc I, II, III
  • Limits, Diff'l. Calc, Integral Calc., Multivariate
• Questions (Dan, 10 min)
• Short Break
• Technology in the Classroom brainstorm
  • What have you heard of being done/working? (Karl-Dieter, 20 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)

  • Classroom-type demo: Multivariable Calc (Karl-Dieter, 10 min)

  • WeBWorK and Sage in Multivariable Calc (Karl-Dieter, 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: singular value decomposition (Dan, 15 min) (a version with more text and description)

• Classroom demos: complex plotting (Dan, 15 min)

• Short Break
• Participant demo worksheets! (25 min)
  • Complex plot of Newton's method!

  • Embeddings (1, 2) of the Sage cell server

• Advanced 2D plotting (Dan, 30 min)

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

Session Links

• Sage Facebook page

• Doing x/x as undefined at x=0

• MAA calc text with Sage - preliminary

• plotting multiple functions with different colors

• AMS Notices article about visual complex analysis

• Needham's Visual Complex Analysis

• Even more plotting stuff with matplotlib

Tuesday, July 17

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 some other demos, and to start exploring interactions with other open source software.

Session I - Getting In-Depth, Part 1

• Welcome Back (Karl-Dieter, 5 min)

• Inserting Images into Worksheets (Karl-Dieter, 10 min)

• Brief intro to Sharing and Publishing worksheet (Karl-Dieter, 5 min)
• Differential Equations (Dan, 30 min)

  • Quickstart

  • double pendulum example; nonlinear phase portraits

• Linear Algebra Quickstart (Dan, 15 min)

• Break

• Re-introduction to Creating Interacts (Karl-Dieter, 20 min)

• Conversation about departmental usage and related issues (moderated by Karl-Dieter, 20 min)
  • Discussing your experience or queries on:
    • Interacting with more than one system on campus
    • Using it on your own
    • Departmental Server and dealing with IT folks or unhelpful/idiosyncratic IT practices
    • Converting materials

  • Notes from discussion (brief version, after computer crash)

Session II - Getting In-Depth, Part 2

• More about the Sage cell and http://interact.sagemath.org (guest speaker Jason Grout, 10 min)

• Stats and Probability quickstart (Karl-Dieter, 15 min)

• SageTeX (Dan, 20 min)

  • examples I showed

• Graph Theory quickstart (Dan, 10 min)

• Break
• Number Theory (Karl-Dieter, 30 min)

  • Quickstart

  • A couple demos

  • Epilogue: useful tools - sws2tex and sws2rst

• Participant worksheet or webpage sharing (Dan, 20 min)

  • Ekaterina's arc length demo

• Homework and wrap-up (Karl-Dieter, 5 min)

Session Links

• Worksheet by Mike May of SLU on embedding images in worksheets

• Snagit for screenshots

• DE links:

  • David Joyner's DiffEq resources

  • A free version of David's book with Marshall Hampton - also available from Johns Hopkins U. press

  • Differential Equations interact examples on the Sage wiki

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

• Animation links:

  • Sage 2d animate documentation

  • Marshall Hampton's animation links (bottom)

  • Niles Johnson's Hopf fibration video in 3d

  • using ffmpeg to make HTML5-friendly animations in Sage; example for non-Firefox browsers, smartphones; example for Firefox

• info on setting up a Sage server (useful for IT people)

• Sage marketing resources

• Stats etc:

  • R statistical software homepage

  • Project MOSAIC (modeling in the first two years of college math)

  • Importing Excel files to Sage

• SageTeX:

  • Using SageTeX from the Sage tutorial

  • More slides about SageTeX

  • Making SageTeX known to a local Sage

  • generate qr codes in latex

• a bit on plotting the prime_pi function

Other potentially useful links

• Cool Monthly article on polynomial non-convergence

• Pictures, including nice ones with Tachyon

• An example of an animation with Tachyon

Warning: the final day's schedule is still tentative

Tuesday, July 24

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

    • Discussion notes from today

  • Setting up a server (Dan)

    • Where to find resources (such as sage-devel)

    • Q&A

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

• Break

• Numerical analysis quickstart (Dan, 15 min)

• Embedding other things into worksheets (Dan, 20 min)

  • Geogebra
  • Flash
  • Applets
  • Processing.js

  • WeBWorK (guest speaker John Travis, 20 min)

    • Updated videos on state of the art with WW

    • Log in as guest to try:

      • Today's demo problems

      • Most recent Sage/WW demos

Session II - Participants Participate

• Welcome back (Dan, 5 min)

• Advanced programming (Dan, 15 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!
• Brief break
• A brief history of Sage (Karl-Dieter, 10 min)

  • A very short talk by William Stein on this

  • A different intro to Sage by Stein with more info

• Preview of future Sage enhancements (Dan, 10 min)
• Wrap-up (Karl-Dieter, 10 min)
  • Post-Workshop Survey - watch your email

  • Meet up at MathFest, JMM!

  • Video links:

    • Video, slides and worksheets from the 2011 Sage "Edu Days 3", including ones from Dan, Karl-Dieter, Ryan Grout, and former PREP participant John Travis. (Dan Drake's SageTeX video is awesome.)

    • The WeBWorK videos here (Wednesday) may be helpful

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

Session Links

• Lies my calculator told me and more lies of the same kind

• Link to Longer history of Sage from mathematical/software viewpoint

• Documentation for how WeBWorK is most effective

Other potentially useful links

• "Automatic Deduction in Dynamic Geometry Using Sage" -- has some interesting ideas on interfacing Sage and GeoGebra

• Documentation for Python sorted() function

• Python string formatting

• Another string formatting link

• Getting data from the Internet in Python

• More multivariable interact ideas

• Beezer's linear algebra book

• Beezer's plan to move TeX to worksheets

• Sage announcement list

• tex2sws conversion software

• Marshall Hampton's awesome 3D animations with Sage and Tachyon

• Riemann mapping in Sage

Office Hours

Please connect as usual in Blackboard Collaborate, 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 Blackboard Collaborate. 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 sage-support.

• Between introductory session and intensive sessions (times TBA)

• Between the various intensive sessions

Homework

• For Tuesday, July 10th

  • 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!
  • Be sure to complete MAA pre-evaluation if it's been sent out and you haven't yet.
  • If you would like, suggest topics for the next session.
• For Tuesday, July 17th
  • 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.
  • Make improvements to a couple worksheets demonstrating what you want to show.
    • Be ready to show one of them off for feedback!
• For Tuesday, July 24th
  • Let us know about additional topics for discussion for the last session
  • Publish at least one worksheet (or web page) you could us in the classroom this fall
• For the future

  • Meet up at MathFest!

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