Tag: Learning

AcroTEX and eqExam for the Truly Impatient

eqExam is just a wonderful LaTeX package for writing things like exams and quizzes. It takes into account most of what you are about right out of the box like whether you are proctoring the exam online or in printed form and whether you want an answer key printed or not. Here is an example of something that I threw together quickly by hacking up one of the example tests.
There are even really advanced things like exporting the answer data for automatic electronic submission; it’s got me really curious how people are using this in the wild.
Setup is really easy, the only caveat is that you must use MiKTEX version 2.8. Version 2.9 seems not to run at this point.
If you have never set up MiKTEX or eqExam before then my directions are attached here. Please let me know how it worked for you if you try them out.
One big question for some of you is why you would use something like this rather than MS Word or Adobe Acrobat Pro and it is a good question. The only answer that I can share is why it is so valuable for me… it is because you get to use all of the power of LaTeX to generate PDF forms and exams. That might sound like not a big deal, but if it doesn’t then you should really dig deeper into LaTeX to see how it could help you to better communicate.

SchemaSpy: A Graphical Database Schema Metadata Browser

SchemaSpy is a Java-based tool that analyzes the metadata of a schema in a database and generates a visual representation of it in a browser-displayable format. It lets you click through the hierarchy of database tables via child and parent table relationships as represented by both HTML links and entity-relationship diagrams. It’s also designed to help resolve the obtuse errors that a database sometimes gives related to failures due to constraints.

This is an excellent tool in its own right; and if nothing else for its beautiful use of Graphviz.
See the example(s) here.

To again feel the creative voice

Through an historical discussion of the role and nature of creativity in the sciences and mathematics, a process to have students find their creative voice is described

(via stevem)
I couldn’t elegantly put to words just how delightful this paper is about the nature of creativity and learning. If you have ever had the experience of having a “nightmare” about something you are trying very hard to learn and then eventually “dreamed the solution”; then you will find this paper to be both fascinating and inspiring.

Fall 2010 Wrapup

During my Fall 2010 semester I took one class, a survey class, Applied Mathetical Analysis. It was a total blast. Sure, every topic covered had entire classes for and books written about them… but that just made it more interesting!
This semester is in my top-three favorite semesters of all time. I worked extremely hard, learned a lot, and will only have fond memories of it.