sneak peak: pythonic math in the silicon forest

[kirby.urner at gmail.com]

Greetings Pythoneers:

Per usual, I've been walking this talk in Portland "Open Source
Capital" Oregon revolving around Python as a math learning language,
viewing math as an extensible type system (like Python) with such
well-known inhabitants as Vector, Polynomial, Polyhedron and so on.

Whereas I've been adjunct faculty by day, piggy backing on Portland
State's bookkeeping, our Saturday Academy is in the midst of
transitioning to an independent 501(c)(3), which will be better for
fundraising (donors will know exactly where their money is going).

Saturday Academy was established by Silicon Forest executives such as
myself, but 23 years ago (i.e. before my time -- I'm aged forty nine or
forty ten or like that), so I'm like this next-gen with a lot of new
ideas inherited from the open source movement (a big part of Portland's
economy these days).

My first gig with this Academy was West Precinct, Hillsboro, a police
station serving a large migrant population of Anglo, Euro and Latino
Americans.  That was a Linux heavy experience, thanks to my co-teacher
Jerritt Collord, then of linuxfund.org and since moved on I know not
where.

Anyway, if you're a CS prof looking for cues, tips and/or tricks, you
might be interested in my writeups, which occur in my blog and
scattered in the various Python in Education groups, most notably
edu-sig and edupython here on Google.

Here're some blog links to get ya started.  Feel free to send further
inquiries by email:

http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2006/11/more-pythonic-mathematics.html
http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2006/10/whiteboard-doodles.html

(includes digicam shots of my whiteboard doodles).

Other background:  Kirby was Guido's side kick at this year's
Shuttleworth Summit in London, starring Alan Kay, Helen King, other
luminaries, aimed at kicking off Project Kusasa, a way of teaching
analytical engineering type skills through TuxLabs and so forth in the
Republic of South Africa.  Kirby was also a volunteer xBase programmer
for the Royal Kingdom of Bhutan, Office of the National Budget and
Royal Insurance Company of Bhutan (RICB).

Kirby Urner
Ministry of Education
Python Nation
kirby.urner at gmail.com
urnerk at python.org