[Edu-sig] this room is occupied (multi-threading metaphor)

[kirby urner]

On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 12:56 PM, Nicholas H.Tollervey <ntoll at ntoll.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> There are lots of ways this analogy could be extended with amusing
> consequences (just remembering back to when I used to regularly teach
> teenagers - they would have had a field day with it). :-)
>
> "It's like there's just one loo (but make sure you don't block)."
>
> (Sorry). :-P
>
> N.
>

Funny you should mention as I'm just reviewing an old presentation
where I get into the scatological / demented humor layer endemic at
various levels, starting in fairly early childhood.

Why not tap into that?

"Mad libs" were my point-in-common, i.e. wacky stories with missing
user-supplied elements, a way to get into the whole topic of string
substitution, important to STEM even if current math standards don't
see where it goes.

Excepts from the slide show mentioned below:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirbyurner/8373804657/in/photostream/lightbox/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirbyurner/8373804285/in/photostream/lightbox/

What I do in some courses is show how a Python class itself looks like
a many-ribbed snake:

class Python:
    def __rib__(self):  pass
    def __rib__(self):  pass
    def __rib__(self):  pass
    def __rib__(self):  pass
    def __rib__(self):  pass
    def __rib__(self):  pass

(legal but useless except for diagramming purposes i.e. shows the "rib cage").

This begets the view of classes as organisms (perhaps genetically
modified) with bowel functions, a metabolism.

Hence the need for a self.stomach and snake.eat( ) and snake.poop()
methods -- self.stomach a FIFO column.

Kirby



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: thoughts about your paper
To: David B Koski


Yeah, I replied.

I've done lots of conferences.  Sometimes I just have to prepare
slides and talk, other times a paper too.

For EuroPython (Vilnius, Lithuania) I was asked to do a paper.  It was
not at all just a script for the slides.

Paper:  http://4dsolutions.net/presentations/urner_europython_2007.pdf

Slides:    http://4dsolutions.net/presentations/connectingthedots.pdf

Kirby