Thoughts on the Intersection of Math and Programming




    x = x + 1


Small Successes



Larger Successes


FullSizeRender (1)



Here’s some code from her (all completely from scratch):

 while (theta < 4*PI) {
    x = r*cos(theta);
    y = r*sin(theta);
    z = x-z;
    s = y-s;

















7 thoughts on “Thoughts on the Intersection of Math and Programming

    The system is javascript, a target system using html5.
    Here is the first one….

    //part one is fixed

    Click for new data point

    //part two (above) is 3 html5 statements

    var i=1;
    function apoint()
    {x= ( b/(x)+x)/2;i=i+1;
    document.getElementById(“demo1”).innerHTML=i+’ … ‘+x

    var x,b;

    //part three is the javascript script
    //and part 4 is fixed

    There are two others.
    Here are the runtime versions: ex0.html ex1.html ex2.html

      1. The 0th item is the current approximate value of root 10, where the 11th value is almost “it”.
        The simple function activates the repeat loop one time, starting with x=50.
        The function is x = (b/x + x)/2

        You can do right shift and “source code” to access the text.

          1. Num 1 is x = (b/(x*x*x) + 3*x)/4
            which is the fourth root of approx 10

            Num 2 is the Newton-Raphson f and f’ for the approx solution of equations, with f(x) = a*x*x + b*x + c

  2. Hi Dan and thanks for this wonderfully elucidating post. I wonder, would it be possible to assign tasks that target specific skills/knowledge – such as now that you know that one mathart project uses vectors, and another uses polar coordinates, we could assign these same (or similar) projects to math students? You’re absolutely right they need to learn programming first, but that could happen within the context of the first couple of such tasks, or outside of math class somehow.

    Also, have you experimented with programming the calculator? Even just making students program calculators to implement formulas such as for solving quadratics, using sine rule, etc, would force students to do some thinking, mathematically. I need to catch a student and try it out to see more specifically what kinds of thinking they engage in.

    1. Hi Julia,
      Thanks for your thoughts!
      Sadly, I have very little wiggle room to play around and have the students learn programming in class. I’m afraid if I asked them to learning programming outside of math class that it would eat into other things that we do that are aligned to the curriculum. I would like to bring in student programming artwork and talk about the math behind the scenes, but the structure of that is showing them a solution to a problem that they never had. The magic was the student who made the program themselves who had to really learn the math that was required.
      I have played around with programming on the calculator and found it to be simply awful compared to what they can do with other technology, but we are a lucky school district with a lot of tech (1-1 chromebooks). I think that the input methods and the weirdness of the graphing calculator programming languages would be a huge hurdle to jump.

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