Turtle geometry
Turtle Geometry presents an innovative program of mathematical discovery that demonstrates how the effective use of personal computers can profoundly change the nature of a student's contact with mathematics. Using this book and a few simple computer programs, students can explore the properties of space by following an imaginary turtle across the screen. The concept of turtle geometry grew out of the Logo Group at MIT. Directed by Seymour Papert, author of Mindstorms, this group has done extensive work with preschool children, high school students and university undergraduates.
Stats for nerds
15recommend
50mentions
27people
2007–2026years
62% recommend38% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- This is on top of HN right now, and there is still nobody who has mentioned the fact that the tier-1 book Turtle Geometry <https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/4663/Turtle-Geomet...> , is in open access.
Do yourself a favor, and read it today : it is that good. Even though it is quite depressing to see that the revolution in education that the book was predicting in its preface, simply never happened.
- This is a hill I will die on. Probably literally. If you are writing in a metaphor of equations, than yes, mutation is almost certainly going to bite you. If you are writing in a metaphor of process, you almost certainly want to manage, as you say.
I feel that early texts were good at this. Turtle Geometry is my personal favorite book in this vein. I seem to recall we spent a long time going over how to double buffer graphics so that you could be working on one buffer while letting the system draw the other. Not sure what texts we used for that, back in the day.
Later texts, though, go through a lot of hurdles to hide the fact that things are actively changing. The entire point is to change things.
- I know this is not what you are looking for, but I just wanted to take advantage of your post to remind the HN crowd of the fact that the magnificent book Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics is available in Open Access at : https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/4663/Turtle-Geomet... . One of the co-author is no less than Harold Abelson, who is also a co-author of the (in)famous SICP.
If you are looking for a book a little less hardcore than the previous recommendation, check out Visual Modeling With Logo: A Structured Approach to Seeing by James Clayson.
- You might like the book Turtle Geometry. Has fun exploring a similar direction, some.
- I do agree that programming is very useful as a medium of exploration, a la what you said. I really like how the book Turtle Geometry approaches this. But that is really something different than what the quoted text is attempting to get at.
> I would not sell yourself short on being able to understand.
I have a master's in mathematics and have continued to take courses while working full-time. It's just that I'm more than aware of the amount of mathematics I do not know compared to an active graduate student in mathematics and above. Or maybe you meant the royal you.
- Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a medium for exploring Mathematics
By Harold Abelson
https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4663/Turtle-GeometryThe-Co...
Gets to Curved Space-Time by chapter 9.
Related
The craft of Prolog
18 recommend · 57
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
347 recommend · 761
Turtles, termites, and traffic jams
9 recommend · 15
Introduction to Algorithms
274 recommend · 880
The Princeton Companion to Mathematics
62 recommend · 101
The AWK programming language
61 recommend · 117
