Greetings, and a question about sequences.

I suspect this may even be a cultural difference, but
(speaking as a professor in an American university) if a
student comes to me and asks "Should I do A or B?"
and both A and B are very bad ideas, I feel it is
perfectly correct to ask "Why are you thinking of doing
A or B, which are both bad ideas? What is your objective?
Have you considered a (much better) alternative C to
achieve that objective?"

Just offering a judgment as to which of A or B is least terrible
seems to me to be less valuable.

E.g. if a student says to you, Should I rob a bank or rob a
grocery store?  You might say, There's more money in the bank.
Or there is less security in the grocery store.  Or you might
say, have you considered getting a loan?

RJF




Andrei Zorine wrote:

> Hello,
> I didn't say Logan should youse one or the other. I just know, that he 
> even didn't ask ALL OF YOU what he should use. He came to learn how to 
> do this and this in Maxima; in turn you suggest he'd not use Maxima at 
> all! I thought this were a Maxima developers list.
> When someone comes here with a precise question about Maxima, why do 
> you teach him living???
> -- 
> Andrei Zorine
>
> Stavros Macrakis wrote:
>
>>> yes, there are many beautiful programs out there. But this man was 
>>> interested in Maxima, and in using special (possibly, user-defined) 
>>> operators in particular. From this point on view, your message was 
>>> totally useless! Responses like this don't attract new users of 
>>> Maxima!.
>>
>>
>>
>> I agree with Steve Horne and Richard Fateman.  *If* Ben Logan were an
>> experienced Maxima user, or *if* we had extensive support for Matlab
>> users (even if only in the form of documentation), then I *might* agree
>> with you that Logan should try to use Maxima instead of Matlab.  But he
>> isn't and we don't.  It will just cause frustration for both Logan and
>> his instructor.  Moreover, it is not a bad thing for Logan to learn many
>> different tools, including both Matlab and Maxima.
>>
>>        -s
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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