Scientific Computing
Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Math
Teaching & Learning Math & Science with Technology
Graphing Calculators, Numerical Methods, Computer Algebra Systems & Linux Clusters
Why Shadowfax? Our cluster is so fast that we named it after the Lord Of The Rings character!
Website once known as CalcPage.tripod.com (1988 – 2008)
Welcome to our 25th annual Calculus & CompSci Carols edition. We've been Caroling the day before December Break for 25 years straight now. Can you believe it? Our Calculus Caroling started out very humbly with a few songs in my Calculus class in 1994. Then year after year we stole ...er... found more and more songs on the web. We also wrote some of our own songs (see example above)! Then about 10 years ago we added preCalculus Carols and 5 years ago we added CompSci Carols too. BTW, the CompSci Carols are mostly Tom Lehrer songs and a few other loose ends. Sorry, attributions have largely been lost to antiquity with the possible exception of Tom Lehrer and a few others. So, if you are interested in caroling in your school next year, here is our definitive edition. We have 3 song books and each is 12 pages all listed below for your Caroling or Filking pleasure as the case may be. Enjoy!
Every year, around Admiral Grace Murray Hopper's birthday, we celebrate CS Education Week aka CSED Week, and participate in The Hour Of Code. The Hour Of Code started a few years ago and has grown by leaps and bounds! Last year it was estimated that thousands of schools participated world wide. Further, 100s of thousands of students wrote millions of lines of code during their Hour Of Code, many for the first time ever!
I like to tell my students, "Grace Hooper's why we have nice things!" Back in the day of the first electronic computers using Vacuum Tube technology in the 1940s, she invented the concept of coding and programming languages. First, she developed the language A, then she created B, and finally COBOL which is still used today in banking and on Wall Street! So, if it weren't for Gracie, you wouldn't have apps on your SmartPhones! We'd have DumbPhones!
Admiral Hopper also worked in Naval Intelligence during WWII. For example, top secret files were made public in the late 1990s describing her work on the Manhattan Project. She used some of her first programs on a computer called the Harvard Mark I to solve some really pesky equations leading to the development of the first Atomic Bomb. If it weren't for Grace, the war in the Pacific would have lasted many more years. She single handedly shortened WWII by several years and saved many allied lives!
In many ways, Grace's story parallels that of Alan Turing, a mathematician who worked for British Military Intelligence during WWII. He built a computer named Christopher out of gears and pulleys, reminiscent of Babbage's Analytical Engine and Ada Lovelace's first programs, cracking the Enigma Code used by the Nazis in the European Theater! Alan is also credited with saving millions of lives and shortening WWII by several years!
Many of the activities at the Hour Of Code website are based on the Blockly or Scratch programming languages using online IDEs and target younger students. I've used these in the past but thought I'd do my own this year based on Python and SAGE (see above) as well as Java and Processing tailoring my presentation to a High School audience.
Python is a very popular programming language used to teach Mathematics and to do real Science. SAGE started out as a supercomputer at Washington State University funded by the NSF free for you to use wherever you have an internet connection. Now, SAGE runs on the Google Compute Platform (GCP) so we are computing in the cloud! You can use SAGE on your cellphone or tablet using an app and you can use SAGE on your cellphone, tablet or PC using an internet browser. Recently, a commercial version of SAGE has been made available at https://cocalc.com with many more options such as Jupyter Notebooks and LaTEX document support..
I will run my Hour Of SAGE with all my classes on Monday 12/9/2019 and with all the remaining Honors Math classes on Wednesday 12/11/2019 as an in-school field trip. So, here's what I'll do on Wednesday:
STEP01: I go to each class and speak about taking Computer Science Honors (intro course in python before AP CSA) next year. I will hand out the following letter too. The CSH (Computer Science Honors) letter I gave to every class except for my current AP CompSci students. I gave them the CSI (Computer Science Independent Study) letter.
In prior years, we also had a class called CRL (Calculus Research Lab aka Scientific Computing Lab) as a co-requisite for AP Calculus using SAGE to complement Calculus class and to introduce the concepts of Scientific Computing aka Computing Science.
STEP02: Then I'll march the whole class to my PC Lab-Classroom to have them do some coding all period! Put yourself in the students' shoes. Most of these students have never coded before and never saw my Lab before (see picture of my room in the banner of this blog). Imagine walking into a dark room. The only source of light was from 24 student PCs and a SmartBoard. On the SmartBoard you see the HourOfCode website masthead with the Game Of Thrones original sound track playing in the background. Sorry, I tend to be a little dramatic.
STEP03: Then I will show the following motivational video about coding as a profession.
STEP04: In AP CompSci we used SAGECELL to do some coding. I start very simply with the basic arithmetic operators in Python: +, -, *, /, //, % and ** aka ^. We follow by using the same operators algebraically. I finish with coding a simple python script or two related to the math the students are learning tailored to algebra, geometry, precalculus or calculus (please see the second screencast at the top of this post). With my Math students I introduced the Processing IDE instead based on Daniel Shiffman's HelloProcessing Hour Of Code (please see first screencast at the top of this post). This year we used OpenProcessing for the first time in Processing.js (Java based) mode computing on the Amazon Wed Services (AWS), computing in the cloud!
BTW, when you are computing in the cloud, you are really using someone's super computer. We usually use HAC or HPC cloud servers:
High Availablility Clusters (HAC) like DropBox and Google Drive are basically tons of redundant storage space for your files and photos. Not to worry, if one server goes down, another of several redundant servers still has your files!
High Peformance Clusters (HPC) like GCP and AWS are made up of several processors so you can run complex code faster! Applications that need a lot of computing power to solve problems in a timely manner include: Weather Simulations, DNA and Genome Sequencing, 3D Movies, Animated Video, Fractal Decryption Algorithms, etc.
STEP05: We finish with a pep talk from President Obama himself! Gotta luv those guest speakers!
STEP06: Last, but not least, I give out Certificates Of Completion! Alas, our In-School Field Trip has come to an end, as all good things must.
Every year around Admiral Grace Murray Hopper's (12/9/1906) and Ada Lovelace's, aka Augusta Ada Byron Countess of Lovelace, (12/10/1815) birthdays, I conduct an in-school Field Trip for the Honors Math classes to my PC Classroom/Lab to talk about taking Computer Science Honors (CSH) or AP Computer Science (CSAP) next year. In recent years, this has coincided with The Hour Of Code and CSED Week sponsored by code.org promoting Computer Science education in grades K-12.
This year code.org has lots of new tutorials for CS ED Week, aka The Hour Of Code. I think I'll do these with my own classes too. I'm trying to get teachers to sign up their students for my Field Trip on Wednesday 12/5/2018. Since I don't have a lot of Seniors this year, I'm also going to show some of these tutorials to my own classes on Monday 12/3/2018 as a trial run.
I could show the Disney Frozen tutorial. There's so many good tutorials to choose from. Maybe I'll show the Star Wars tutorial? Wait, Angry Birds looks fun too! Karel The Dog was fun last year! I could do a different tutorial each period!
There's a new tutorial based on the TI nSpire CX CAS that I may use for my AP Calculus BC class. That link also has a tutorial for the TI-84! One problem with these tutorials is that they are teacher driven. So, the teacher needs to know about programming in general and TI-BASIC in particular. Most of the other code.org tutorials are student centered with videos to keep them on track.
We use the nSpire every day in AP Calculus. We even code with TI-BASIC on the nSpire. We've written code for solving Quadratic Equations and for Newton's Method. We even wrote code for Riemann Sums and Euler's method! So, maybe I'll show this tutorial on MATHLAB or Octave instead!
Last year the Processing tutorial worked very well. The only issue with the Processing tutorial is that it will most definitely take more than and hour. Daniel Siffman, put together a nice intro but he sure likes to talk! I may take a couple of days on this one! My Computer Science students have been using Processing a lot this year, so I'll do SAGE with them.
This year we are doing much the same thing. Our goal here is twofold. (1) Promote Computer Science Education in general. (2) Recruit more students for the CSH and CSAP classes next year!
For students who have not done The Hour of Code with me, codehs.com's Karel the Dog is an easier intro. Codehs.com has two new tutorials. Another nice tutorial is based on SQL and Harry Potter which is a little dry. Another tutorial is about making graphics with JavaScript which is a little challenging. I also like the code.org tutorials because they feature experts in the video tutorials such as Bill Gates and Mark Zukerburg teaching about if/then/else branches and repeat/until loops!
Here's some videos from code.org:
Admiral Grace Murray Hopper is one of my personal idols! Not only did she usher in the entire industry of Software Engineering but she single-handedly invented Computer Programming Languages! She was a Math Professor, a Naval Officer, the developer of COBOL and an all around class act!
To honor Grace Hopper's memory, I registered all my classes for an Hour Of Code. Maybe you'd like to participate as well? The Hour Of Code is about exposing as many students as possible to Computer Science in all disciplines. I'm making this presentation during course selection week as well to encourage students to take Computer Science at my High School! CSEDWEEK was an unprecedented international effort last year. Over 15,000,000 students at more than 30,000 locations (mostly schools) in nearly 200 countries were registered to participate and wrote more than 500,000,000 lines of code!
I teach Computer Science and see it as a great tool in all disciplines. It's a shame that more students don't take Computer Science in High School. Taking Computer Science can lead to a great major in college and a great profession! I also use Computer Science in all my Math and Science courses in High School and College!
I've been teaching people how to code since 1975. I've also been teaching AP Computer Science at the High School level since 1984. Finally, I've been teaching computing at the College level since 1993. Needless to say, I'm a vehement advocate for a strong Computer Science Education in particular and a challenging STEM curriculum in general for every High School student. In fact, every single class I teach, every single day of the week, is devoted to some aspect of STEM! STEM stands for "Science, Technology, Engineering and Math." Actually, I try to incorporate STEAM into my classroom: "Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math." By Arts I do mean Art (fractals, 3D graphics, animation) but I also try to tie in plenty of History, Literature, Music and Culture. Mine is one of the few High Schools in the USA to offer a Computer Science curriculum! CS50 at Harvard, see playlist above, covers a lot of the same material we cover here at Baldwin Senior High in my AP Computer Science class. They use Scratch, C, php and JavaScript whereas we use Python, SAGE, MPI and Java, but the concepts are the same! Sadly, the United States is falling far behind other countries in training professionals for jobs in the 21st Century that will require this skill more and more! So, in answer to this growing demand, here's what I teach (in addition to Math and Science): Intro To Computer Science (python):
AP Computer Science A (java): CIS: Computing Independent Study (MPI with FORTRAN, C, C++ and python):
