[Edu-sig] explaining functions [Possibly OT]

[Laura Creighton]

In a message of Sun, 05 Dec 2004 20:15:07 EST, Brian van den Broek writes:

>My own inclination is to say something like "a function is a set of 
>pairs, where the first member of each pair is an n-tuple of inputs, and 
>the second member is the m-tuple that is output, and for each input 
>n-tuple, there is a exactly one output m-tuple to which it is mapped."
>
>And, right after that, they'd all drop the class ;-)
<snip>
>
>Brian vdB

My experience is that it is better to teach this by showing examples, and
then getting to any defintions later, rather than starting with a definition.
Depending on your class size, you may be able to get them to produce a
definition that works.

I'd say that your definition doesn't explain why 3 successive calls to
random.randrange(4) produces 3 different results.

Laura