The Education VECTOR

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 17

The Education Vector¶

January 1990

Editor Alan Sykes

This Education Vector has been distributed free to everyone on the I-APL mailing list. It is reprinted from VECTOR Vol.6 No.3. VECTOR is the Quarterly Journal of the British APL Association; for more information about the British APL Association, contact the Secretary: Graham Parkhouse, Dept. of Mech. Eng., University of Surrey, GUILDFORD.

Contents¶

Editor:
Dr Alan Sykes,
Dept of Management Science and Statistics,
University College of Swansea,
Singleton Park, SWANSEA SA2 8PP

Editorial¶

by Alan Sykes

Welcome once more to Education Vector. After a brief respite, I am back at the keyboard again. (In fact, as an applied statistician, I seem to spend most of my time at what I consider to be the least tuneful of all the keyboards I use!)

Thanks are due to Anthony Camacho, who stepped smartly into my shoes for the last edition, as my spare time had been taken up with organising a conference of statisticians and APL professionals at the University of Wales Conference Centre at Gregynog.

This edition is very much in the mould of its predecessors. I must confess that I enjoy the opportunity of trying fresh approaches to the problems of understanding randomness. (Don't tell me, you'd guessed that already!) This time I've tried to illustrate one of the most important aspects of a statistician's job - namely to look for evidence that might invalidate the current model being used, and if such evidence is found, to construct a new model that overcomes the objections to the original one. This principle, of course, is very much the spirit in which all scientific progress is made.

In addition, I have included a section on some of the puzzles which have appeared in past Education Vectors and the responses that I have had to them. It is very flattering, as well as heartening, that I receive letters from many different people, though I must confess I would be even more pleased to have a greater number of letters from teachers and users of APL in education. One such letter comes from Walter Spunde in Australia who has written at length on how he has used APL to teach linear algebra. I hope to include this contribution in the next edition.

At the international APL conference in New York that I attended in August, it was interesting to see that vendors of APL interpreters are increasingly making their product available to the general public. Of course you don't get everything for nothing, but enough to be very useful. I refer in particular to two pieces of software that are now available.

First is Tangible Math that is produced by I.P. Sharp, and comes with a small explanatory booklet plus disk for IBM PCs. Secondly the recently launched PC APL2 interpreter has been made available by IBM in a form called TryAPL2. This interpreter is what is called a second generation APL interpreter - hence the '2' in its name. This means that there are many more interesting features available which are not possible with I-APL or any other first-generation APL interpreter. Consequently, the time is ripe for some explanation as to just what this all means for those who are relative newcomers to APL.

In a future edition, I hope to include more details of these products and how to get them. In the meantime, I trust that you will find something of interest in the subsequent pages.