Sunday, September 11, 2005

Sunday Programming

  1. In preparation for their exam tomorrow, some of the students in my gen-ed class are programming every definition, fact, and example that we have covered into virtual cheat sheets in their graphing calculators. This practice is so common that they do not even think of it as cheating.

  2. In preparation for their exam tomorrow, some of the students in my calculus class are writing programs for their old TI-83s* (or a TI-83 borrowed from a friend or sibling) that will quickly generate tables of values for estimating the slope of the tangent line or for numerically guessing the value of a limit.

  3. Finally fed up with having to wear a sweatshirt inside the house all summer, I am trying to program my thermostat to a more reasonable temperature. There are only two options: heat and cool (no off!). The last time there was a power outage, the thermostat decided that it would chill the house to an arbitrarily selected temperature between 70 (arctic) and 74 (chilly). I keep manually resetting it to 77 (nice), but it keeps overruling me. (Yes, I am freezing all winter.)


*I have forbidden the use of the the TI-89 and TI-92 on all exams. Turns out that -- due to the questions I'm asking -- it doesn't really matter. But I didn't know that when I made the announcement.