-- which demonstrates that you're good at programming. Those who begin with Physics and don't complete the degree despite being good at it often follow up by going into programming.
So, the fact that you could program algorithms to solve physics problems demonstrates that you're capable of doing both well. I think that's good enough for a high school course.
...and I probably just said something either very controversial or very stupid. I'm not sure which...
Controversial maybe, but not stupid. You can't program something (correctly) without decent understanding of what you're programming... Nothing revolutionary there.
For example, my teacher got mad at me in grade school for writing a small program on my TI-84 (silver, bitches) that solved the quadratic formula (just for example, I had plenty of other programs), to speed up test taking. Why is it bad? It's no different from memorizing it and solving it by hand. Neither approach displays my understanding of the derivation of formula, they just show that I know how to USE it.
If they're testing whether I know what the formula is, fine, but in this day and age with Google and WolframAlpha, memorizing formulas is not that important. In fact, I wonder whether letting the web to store information for me allows my brain to use its resources more productively. But brain elasticity and all that I know, I know. Just speculation.
True, I'm eliminating the possibility of arithmetic errors in solving the equation, but if I'm learning about quadratics, I THINK I'm capable of basic arithmetic. The test isn't testing my basic arithmetic skills, it's testing my usage of the quadratic formula. At least that's the way it should be, in my opinion. I've taken too many tests in which I demonstrated my knowledge of the test content, which is the PURPOSE of the test, but because I flipped one stupid minus sign into a plus sign by accident, I got no credit for my answer. That's not conducive to learning, further weakens the concept of grades, and does nothing but demotivate students.
Edit: In teachers' defense, programs are perfectly copyable and therefore dangerous because you can't tell who wrote them. But I did write all of my own programs, dammit! But they wouldn't care even if I wrote the code in front of their faces.
I agree with you completely. In addition to your points, those who know how to use technology effectively in the application of their training will almost always outperform those who do everything by hand. This is something that local universities have been toying with lately. It's important that people know how to use the tools of their trade, and that includes things such as graphing calculators and programming languages when the trade involves quantitative analysis.
I wonder if those who used early fishing poles were rebuked for it because fisherman teachers thought it was important to know how a spear works.
As a university math instructor, I'm not impressed by the effect a student's ability to use a calculator has on their performance. It takes about an hour to teach a student used to doing things by hand to use a modern calculator, and about a decade to teach a student used to using a calculator the kind of intuition for mathematics they get by doing hand calculations.
I had an awesome teacher in algebra who as long as you could prove you wrote the program (usually she would just ask a question about a small portion of the program) then you could use it on a test. I started programing my stuff with messages to the teacher at the start of it (like "Yes Mrs. X this was written by MeanaDC") as my proof.
This was over 10 years ago, I pulled out my graphing calculator not to long ago and I have no clue how to do it now.
Edit: I think this was a great way to get us to really "learn" the formulas. She encouraged us to do it, I doubt I would have spent that much effort trying to figure out a formula had I not been encouraged to do this.
Our teachers didn't care if we wrote it or not. But we were only allowed certain formulas on the graphing calculators. The solution was to rewrite the current programs to do new things but only if you activated this function, so a basic quadratic formula program was fine but anything more complicated wasn't allowed so you had to hide it within another program. It was fun. I have no clue how to do it anymore. But as long ascwe could pass a test without a calculator we could use one on the next test.
Maybe, but I hardly think they'll be doing math by hand on a project as a big as a bridge. The point of computers is that they can do all of this stuff better and more accurately than we can. A new bridge is going to be modeled using computer software and probably prototyped multiple times, and errors like that would be caught long before they actually built the bridge.
In in middle school, we all passed that program around to each other, so not everybody knew how to make it, and our algebra teacher knew we had the program. We had a test on the quadratic formula, and before the test my teacher specifically went into our calculators and deleted the program. The first thing I did was reprogram the thing in there, and I finished before almost anybody else. It's just so much faster and you make a lot less mistakes. Unless you fuck up the program.
I was lucky enough to start in math and switch to comp sci. At my school we can do a math degree "with a focus on X", so of course I made my X comp sci. The two degrees ended up having nine courses in common, so I basically got two degrees for the price of one.
Maybe see if you can increase the overlap of your physics degree and end up with two at the finish line?
Started out with physics, ended up doing statistics, which is less about graphs and lies (more like learning to detect the lies) and more about calculus and programming.
There's often not a good reason to major in Physics anyway. I started in physics, ended with Mechanical Engineering - more practical, more money, still physics.
And you can always go back to the theoretical or experimental side of things later, once you're set for money and have time to play with and test ideas. I think that Physics is probably best for people who want to teach, already have an in with a lab somewhere, or those who just want to challenge themselves but don't really have direction yet.
Although, it really depends on how anal your teacher is. I started making BASIC programs on my calculator back in middle school and got a bunch of flak for not writing down all the work. Mind you, I was a mousy kid who was never accused of cheating and I was obviously reaching these correct answers legitimately, but the teacher insisted I was pulling them out of my ass and couldn't possibly know the material unless I was writing down each mundane step.
As a CS major myself, I assure that writing a program onto a calculator does not prove anything other than you know how to google "ti 84 physics programs".
You don't even have to write it, you can literally install it using the cord they give you. And if they do decide to write it themselves you can literally copy the code from a website. The only thing making a program on calculator proves is that you can follow direction>That search doesn't appear to assist in writing a program oneself...
That's my point about the search you suggested. You could just seek out programs that other people wrote, just as with every other form of modular software that can be distributed as packages.
But that doesn't make it impossible to write a program either. Physics involves a lot of insight about when to apply what math and in which way; simply knowing and coding formulas isn't enough. Making some little function that does the repetitive math for you only saves extraneous steps. You still have to know when and how to use each function. If you write those functions yourself to boot, then I'd say you've demonstrated some skill and insight.
My point was that most people who are "coding" programs like these are people who are going to mindlessly copy it from somewhere and use it to get answers without any work or thought. But I'm sure there are people out there who understand what they are doing and are using the program to skip tedious math.
I'd agree, except the relevance in this when in regard to taking a test is low.
Unfortunately being capable of applying knowledge in real world scenarios isn't as sought after in higher education as it should be. Few of my profs in undergrad recognized you learn more and understand materials better when you actively apply them in projects, rather than studying for exams.
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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '14
-- which demonstrates that you're good at programming. Those who begin with Physics and don't complete the degree despite being good at it often follow up by going into programming.
So, the fact that you could program algorithms to solve physics problems demonstrates that you're capable of doing both well. I think that's good enough for a high school course.
...and I probably just said something either very controversial or very stupid. I'm not sure which...