From harelb Sat Sep 17 21:48:58 -0400 1994
To: 112reform
Subject: 

Hello all,

I've peeked at the "Ithaca College Calculus Group" Calculus book on
Lisa's desk and below are some thoughts; anyone else want to chime in?

I haven't looked at the "Activities" sections very much. In the
Projects sections, there is a "Drug Dosage" problem that is
essentially an extension of Marshall Cohen's problem; it's
interesting, although we may decide it has a bit too many parts,
proportional to how much material is actually being learned, so we can
cut down; alternatively, we have use ideas from this project to add
parts to "The Marshall Cohen problem" so we have several in-class
Activities' worth of material.

I liked the "Fish Pond" project a lot; I find it comparatively very
realistic, and it integrates nicely (no pun intended) the
"water-solutions" D.E. problems with some numerical integration -- in
a way I like since it shows students how *natural* numerical
integration is; God doesn't just walk up to you and tell you that your
town's pond has 49,352.765 gallons of water; you have to take
*measurements* and *approximate*.

Many of the projects seem better suited for 111 than 112 by the way.

"Investigating Series" I found interesting but better I think for
several in class activities, group-work, etc.

Finally, "spread of a disease" gives another reasonably realistic, and
timely (given one in 200? in 100? Americans with HIV...) project, but
I don't like the way this project (as elsewhere) they've tried to be
sooooo careful with the breakdown, "the first member does X", "the
second member does Y" that virtually all teamwork is gone.

Not only that, but even when they break down the tasks, they don't' say
"let Jill use method X with N=200 and Jack use method Y with N=200"
but rather they give Jack and Jill different N's so they can't even
compare and discuss with one another what they've otherwise done
in entirely separate and disjoint cosmoses for heaven's sake! It is an
interesting scenario, but it seems to me that some of the projects,
and this one especially, need to be modified so it's our idea of
"Calculus: An active and Participatory Approach with Group-Work and
Projects" rather than IC's "Calculus: An Active Approach with
Projects" alone.

Also, we should probably get "the solutions" from IC for the projects,
and either work out the solutions to the "top 5 (6?)" project-wannabes
in the New Mexico projects-calc book, or ask (Cynthia Woodburn?) for
the solutions, or both...

Harel