[Edu-sig] explaining functions [Possibly OT]

[Laura Creighton]

I haven't run into 'don't understand what a function is' but I have run into
'don't understand why you would want to use one'.  My youngish students would 
rather just paste the formula that is in the function again, and again.

So I gave them a problem where they calculated the cost of a list of somethings with a
tax rate of 5%.  The pasters were more or less as fast as the function users.
Then I said 'ok, now the government has lowered taxes.  They are now 4%'.
Suddenly the pasters saw that the function users had a much easier time of it.

And the climax was when I made them fix _each others_ code to make it produce
the correct results.  I was called 'mean' for that.  :-)

Laura