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TPHS’ top-flight math students compute on the
cutting edge
By Ian
S. Port
The conference attendees were stunned. Here they
were, professional technical specialists — engineers, professors,
researchers — convening to discuss a high-powered mathematics program, a
meet hosted by the company that developed it. They’d used the software in
their careers for calculations, analysis and presentations.
And, sitting in the ballroom, they were being
showed up by high school students. That’s how Torrey Pines High math teacher
Abby Brown recounts a conference she recently attended with four students
from her Advanced Topics in Mathematics II class, which, by any measure, is
a far cry from your typical high school math period.
For starters, most of the students in her class
aren’t fulfilling requirements — they’re present purely for enjoyment, most
of them having long ago run out of math classes at the high school level.
Their exceptionality is matched perhaps only by
the class’ curriculum, which can’t be found in any dog-eared textbook.
The students in Advanced Topics in Mathematics
II work with a program that is so new and advanced, it can’t be purchased
yet. They’re part of the beta testing team for Wolfram Research’s Mathematica Version 6 — the latest version of a tool
used most commonly by top-flight mathematicians and researchers.
“At its most basic level it works as a giant
calculator,” Brown explains, banging mysterious commands into a prompt.
“You can do arithmetic. We can create graphs versus trying to imagine. Even
on the graphing calculator its like these chunky
little pixels — here it’s in color and you can easily make changes.”
Brown’s excitement is easy to understand, even
if the math isn’t. The program is helping her visualize the relationships
of calculus — which is partly why it’s become an essential teaching tool
for her.
“That’s what I really like about the class,
because a lot of the stuff you learn in calculus you kind of wonder why you
learn it,” explains Cindy, a senior. “It’s math
and you like it, but you’re just like ‘What is the application in this?’
But when you look at Mathmatica, you do stuff and
can know that that’s what they do in 3-D movies.”
In her class, Brown’s students basically get to
play with this ultra-secret tool. There aren’t really assignments or
homework because the students are so enamored with it that they basically
motivate themselves.
“My original plan had four different types of
projects,” Brown says. “I had this plan where it was all going to be more
organized into categories. The whole structure, it didn’t fall apart but
what I’ve noticed that’s happened is that almost every project fits like all
four of the categories.”
Community service was one of the four
categories, with students using the software to write little programs that
visually represent basic math concepts from algebra on up to more advanced
math. But, not satisfied with merely animating boring graphs and images,
students have turned the tools into interactive stories, with music and
animation to help illustrate math concepts.
“So now for younger students or someone trying
to learn some mathematics, or a teacher that doesn’t have time to learn how
to type exactly what needs to be typed, the students in the class are going
to be developing things — now they have this little module that somebody
else can use to demonstrate in class in this much more user-friendly way,”
Brown explains.
She’s been using earlier versions of the program
in her classes for years, and has even set up a Web site that allows remote
use of the software. She didn’t realize it for a long time, but her Mathematica Web site was a pioneering display of how to
use the software in the high school classroom, and it got the company
interested in letting her classes beta-test the
latest version.
“I tell the students that Mathematica
is my video game,” says Brown with a giggle. “Because it’s that engaging
and it will suck me in and its like ‘OK, I got to figure out the next
thing, how do I get the next part or I want this to work — it’s like
getting to the next level and the hours can just slip by. And I know some
of the students have started to get that addiction too, especially when
you’re working on something that you’re really passionate about.”
The passion is apparent in Brown’s students.
“It is fun and it’s really self-motivated
because they’re our own projects,” says Karen, another one of Brown’s
bright seniors. “We have to have our own plans of what we want to do.”
Brown says the students she brought to the
conference were the stars of the show, because they were already familiar
with new features of the not-yet-unveiled program.
“Most of the people at the conference had never
had their hands on their program. I brought four students with me and they
were showing work they had already been doing in this. We know this stuff
and nobody else knows and that’s really exciting,”
“It’s like you’re making your own footprint in
the world,” Cindy says.
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