Demo page

[kevinbarabash]

It would be nice if people could experiment writing pattern based rewrite rules and then test them expressions in the browser.

[tkosan]

I found it to be useful to have people practice with just the pattern matching part of rules before moving on to full rules. To see what I mean you can do the following:

• Evaluate Manipulate('(8*x - 2 == -9 + 7*x)) in MathPiperIDE.
• Select the "Tree" tab.
• Enter the pattern a_Integer? then press <enter>.
• Click in the blank area near the tree to clear the highlighting.
• Enter the pattern a_ + b_, etc.

I have not added the ability to enter a complete rule into the text field yet, but this should be easy to do.

If you think this kind of GUI would be useful for experimenting with the math-rules rewrite rules, it shouldn't be too difficult to modify my expression structure app to work with math-rules.

[kevinbarabash]

I was going to start with a very simple page with a couple of textfields, nothing fancy. I wanted it mainly as a dev tool at the moment. I'm curious about the different modes. What does each of them do?

[tkosan]

The "Help" page contains an explanation of the modes. The short research paper that is linked to on the help page provides a justification for why expression trees should be used to teach the structure that mathematical expressions possess. The modes in the application are experimental ways I have come up with so far to teach expression structure using trees.

The manipulation application that is in MathPiperIDE implements some of the more advanced ideas that are in the research paper. The paper was published in 1987, and I am baffled why its content has never been implemented in the schools.

[kevinbarabash]

Interesting. I wasn't aware of the research. I wish the article would've compared students' ability to transform fully parenthesized expressions against those that weren't, e.g.

5*((4+3)+2) --> (5*4)+((2+3)*5)
5*(4+3+2) --> 5*4 + 5*3 + 5*2

I wonder how much it has to do with seeing an expression tree vs. whether the expression tree is binary or n-ary.

[tkosan]

I wonder how much it has to do with seeing an expression tree vs. whether the
expression tree is binary or n-ary.

It shouldn't be too difficult to answer this question if one had access to a group of students to use as research subjects. The difficult part is gaining access to such students.