🚀 go-pugleaf

choy@skorpio.usask.ca (I am a terminator.) writes:
>Gilles.Leblanc@f2.n255.z1.fidonet.org (Gilles Leblanc) writes:
>|>  My 
>|> question is whether we are harming the students by teaching them to use the 
>|> tools before they have understood the concept.  I would appreciate any 
>|> response to these comments.
>
>Give them problems where they have to solve for the percentages or whatever
>symbolically.
>
>Sample problem:
>
>The bank has an interest rate that varies from month to month. If I have
>x in the bank in the months n, n+1, and n+2 where the interest rates are
>a%, b%, and c%, how much money do I have in my account at the end of month
>n+2?

This is an idea that I REALLY like.  Numbers are simply symbols and
students shouldn't be concerned with a numerical answer until the end
of the problem were they plug in the numbers.

I know of one case where students got to college and their only
concept of sine and cosine and tangent was as their teacher had told
them, ``Those buttons on the calculator.''

Mark D. Smucker    -----    mds@iastate.edu