Python 2.0 and teaching precalculus
Kirby Urner
urner at alumni.princeton.edu
Sun Sep 10 12:10:05 EDT 2000
Kirby Urner <urner at alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:
>Erik Max Francis <max at alcyone.com> wrote:
>
>>Kirby Urner wrote:
>>
>>> def wiggle(function,input,epsilon=1e-10):
>>> """
>>> Accepts a function, value and returns delta f / delta x
>>> for small epsilon (default of 1^-10 may be overridden)
>> ...
>>
>>1 seems like a bad choice for an epsilon ... :-)
>
>Woops.
>
>Thanks for pointing out the typo. Fixed it at the source
>page: http://www.ineterena.com/~pdx4d/ocn/precalc.html
>
>Of course it's all relative. 1 is really small if your
>x's are 10,000,000,000 apart :-D
>
>Kirby
==================
Actually, it was already OK on the web version, but your quick
detection of the goof prompted me to follow up on edu-sig:
>Here's wiggle():
>
>def wiggle(function,input,epsilon=1e-10):
> """
> Accepts a function, value and returns delta f / delta x
> for small epsilon (default of 1^-10 may be overridden)
> """
> return (function(input+epsilon) - function(input))/epsilon
Fast reader on comp.lang.python caught the above typo error
in my post (web version was OK).
Of course 1^-10 is simply 1. Now that I stop to cogitate,
I see this could be a real confusion. 1e-10 = 10^-10, just
as 1e2 = 10^2 = 100. Need to remind students that #.###e###
means #.### x 10**###, obviously not #.###**###.
Kirby
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