suggestion: A preamble?

[saadarif]

We talked about this previously: should we have a preamble page before chapter 1 with Clements R script? The idea would be to bring the problem (that LP helps to solve) front and center. An open-ended exercise would be for students to explain the code the in english?

[clement-lee]

Is the idea showing them an R script, and asking them to try to explain what the code does, then suggesting that it could be difficult to understand someone else's code without explanation?

Also, do we need to give them a bad script? Or simply the final product but without any explanations?

[saadarif]

Is the idea showing them an R script, and asking them to try to explain what the code does, then suggesting that it could be >difficult to understand someone else's code without explanation?

Yes, that's the idea. We discussed this early on. The rationale for this, at least from my persepective, is that we bring the problem up first to to motivate the rest of the lesson. For the moment we dive straight into an explanation of LP.

However, Mark's first exercise in chapter 1 does exactly this. Only it comes after a brief explanation of what LP is. This is not a problem per se but I do prefer a lesson that brings the problem to the fore from the beginning to motivate the rest of the lesson. However, this is a personal preference for staging a lesson....

Also, do we need to give them a bad script? Or simply the final product but without any explanations?

I think your Wisconsin.R script with some bare comments would suffice for this. We also need to introduce this script at some point. At the moment this script won't even come up till Chapter 4.

[saadarif]

I think we have now resolved this with issue #81