Programm or Be Programmed

In the course of learning algebra we will encounter processes that will consistently lead to answers. These may be the steps to find the value of “x” that makes a conditional equation true, the steps to find the slope of a line given the coordinates of two points, or the steps to convert a general linear equation to the slope-intercept form in order to read off the y-intercept. After we have understood the concept behind the process and practiced the process enough so that we can agree that we’ve mastered it, we will then teach that process to the computer, i.e. we will learn to program the steps of this process. The word used by mathematicians and computer scientists for such a programmable process is ALGORITHM. (Named after its inventor Al Gore. :) ) The programming language that we will us is the spartan version of Basic found on the TI83+/TI84+ calculator.