[SciPy-user] scipy in education, survey results

[Arnd Baecker]

Hi,

presently we are using python+Numeric+scipy in a course on computational
physics (if you are interested, you can have a look at
  http://www.comp-phys.tu-dresden.de/cp2003/
- however most of the material there is in German).
In order to get more detailed feedback from the students
(in addition to the tutorial sessions) we ran a questionnaire.
Here I would like to summarize the main points for the list:

 1.) Documentation was generally considered as pretty bad
     (see below for a "histogramm" - the strongest opinion
     was "complete rewrite")

     Main wishes:
        - more extensive documentation
        - examples for the routines
        - help browser a la mathematica

 2.) Various issues
     - differing behaviour of scipy.xplt between M$Windows and Linux
       (in particular dynamic plots)
     - problems with interpreting error messages
     - Linux installation (presently) much more difficult than for
       M$Windows.

As usual, the above only raises the critical points -
overall the feedback was definitively positive!
In particular the students liked very much
to quickly code graphical output (including mouse interactions)
and dynamical plots.
Also it was appreciated that it is freely available
and all of the students either installed python+Numeric+scipy
under MSWindows (most) or linux (just a few) at home.

Arnd



Statistics:  (marks range from 1 to 6, with 1 being  best and 6 worst;
===========   just the normal German school marks ;-)


General happiness with python:

very good  1
good       2  |||||||||
.          3  ||||||
.          4
.          5  |
very bad   6  |


Documentation:
                    Python          Numeric      scipy
very good  1      |                            |
good       2      ||||
.          3      ||              ||||         |||
.          4      ||||            |||||        |||||||
.          5      ||              ||           ||
very bad   6      ||              |||          ||