Presentation:
Paper:
Our most recent workshop concerning the role of software in the teaching of Linear Algebra was:
Basic Matlab has been used at Spelman as an aid to teaching Linear Algebra since the beginning of 1995, in conjunction with popular books by Steve Leon (now in its 5th edition) and more recently David Lay (now in its 2nd edition).
Exposure to moderate amounts of Matlab has helped students in introductory linear algebra courses distinguish the roles of repetitive work such as Gaussian elimination from central concepts such as spanning and independence. It has taught faculty and students alike that determinants and matrix inverses have limited computational value in the solution of linear systems, contrary to what generations of text books would have us believe.
Some proponents of software tools such as Matlab advocate their use in every aspect of a course; I believe that this is misguided at best, and in some cases which I have observed, an actual abuse of technology.
In the summers of 1995-1997, I had the good fortune to be part of three ATLAST workshops, held in Seattle (1995 and 1996) and La Jolla (1997). These were sponsored by the NSF funded ATLAST Project (Augmenting the Teaching of Linear Algebra through the use of Software Tools), which is directed by Steve Leon.
Following June 1995's introductory ATLAST workshop, lead by Jane Day, I participated in an ATLAST Developer's Workshop in August 1996 lead by David Hill; some of the resulting lesson plans are now available.
This resulted in a talk entitled Why teach Singular Value Decomposition? (140K, uncompressed postscript), most recently given at ICTCM in New Orleans, November 1998, based on the paper listed above.
In June 1997, at UCSD in La Jolla, I served as a Group Leader at another ATLAST Developer's Workshop, lead by Lila Roberts. Our group, which included Rick Elderkin, Dale Hathaway and David Nasby, worked on two lesson plans of an applied nature, both emphasizing linear combinations. One was on financial abritrage, and the other was on cross-dissolving of digital images.
There is now a book of
ATLAST Computer
Exercises for Linear Algebra, which grew out of ATLAST Developer's
Workshops conducted up to 1995.
(This is http://www.spelman.edu/~colm/linalg.html,
click here to return to main page.)