IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/war/wpaper/2015-38.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Think not calculate! Implementation of Felix Klein postulates in economic education with CAS software

Author

Listed:
  • Tomasz Kopczewski

    (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw)

Abstract

For the last two decades, there have been many attempts to broadly introduce the Computer Algebra System (CAS) programs to teach economics. So far, none of these trials have reported significant success. The purpose of this article is to investigate the reasons why this software is still not commonly used tool in teaching economics. Paper is based on interdisciplinary approach. Experience of introducing CAS to teach advanced microeconomics is being confronted with philosophy of science, anthropology, history of mathematics, history of economic thought, education, etc. This leads to coherent new approach to the application of CAS to teach economics using tools of blended learning and m-learning, where the postulates of mathematics teaching reform presented in 1905 by Felix Klein are the core point. One of these postulates is to shift from laborious calculations to presentations of results in the functional form, what allows for the demonstration of complex relationships in simple graphical form. By using this approach, students can devote more time to evaluation of the reality of operation of theoretical models. Introduction of Felix Klein postulates improves significantly the tradeoff between quality and accessibility of this software for students and teachers. To improve the efficiency of using CAS in teaching, this paper presents tools created by the Author. One of those is to use language corpus analysis to isolate the most often appearing MAXIMA commands, what may simplify and accelerate the process of learning the programming language and syntax. Paper presents the Leontief (1935) Input-Output model as an example of using CAS in teaching microeconomics. This model is one of the most striking examples of the inadequacy of the teaching results obtained in relation to the effort of pen-and-paper calculations. Using CAS for this model is a qualitative change both in didactics as well can extend scientific research and theory applications.

Suggested Citation

  • Tomasz Kopczewski, 2015. "Think not calculate! Implementation of Felix Klein postulates in economic education with CAS software," Working Papers 2015-38, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    • Handle: RePEc:war:wpaper:2015-38
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.wne.uw.edu.pl/index.php/download_file/2150/
    File Function: First version, 2015
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William Lee & Richard H. Courtney & Steven J. Balassi, 2010. "Do Online Homework Tools Improve Student Results in Principles of Microeconomics Courses?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 283-286, May.
    2. Belsley, David A, 1999. "Mathematica as an Environment for Doing Economics and Econometrics," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 14(1-2), pages 69-87, October.
    3. Jinhu Li & Jeffrey S. Racine, 2008. "Maxima: An open source computer algebra system," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(4), pages 515-523.
    4. Nicolaas J. Vriend, 2002. "Was Hayek an Ace?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 68(4), pages 811-840, April.
    5. Dilip Soman & George Ainslie & Shane Frederick & Xiuping Li & John Lynch & Page Moreau & Andrew Mitchell & Daniel Read & Alan Sawyer & Yaacov Trope & Klaus Wertenbroch & Gal Zauberman, 2005. "The Psychology of Intertemporal Discounting: Why are Distant Events Valued Differently from Proximal Ones?," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 347-360, December.
    6. Mary Ellen Benedict & John Hoag, 2011. "Factors Influencing Performance in Economics: Graphs and Quantitative Usage," Chapters, in: Gail M. Hoyt & KimMarie McGoldrick (ed.), International Handbook on Teaching and Learning Economics, chapter 31, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Feinerer, Ingo & Hornik, Kurt & Meyer, David, 2008. "Text Mining Infrastructure in R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 25(i05).
    8. Nicolaas J. Vriend, 2002. "Was Hayek an Ace?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 68(4), pages 811-840, April.
    9. Michael R. Hammock & J. Wilson Mixon, 2013. "Microeconomic Theory and Computation," Springer Books, Springer, edition 127, number 978-1-4614-9417-1, December.
    10. Jonathan A. Schwabish, 2014. "An Economist's Guide to Visualizing Data," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(1), pages 209-234, Winter.
    11. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2002. "Microeconomic Principles Teaching Tricks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 449-453, May.
    12. Bonaccorsi, Andrea & Rossi, Cristina, 2003. "Why Open Source software can succeed," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 1243-1258, July.
    13. Michael Watts & William E. Becker, 2008. "A Little More than Chalk and Talk: Results from a Third National Survey of Teaching Methods in Undergraduate Economics Courses," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 273-286, July.
    14. David W. Boyd, 1998. "On the Use of Symbolic Computation in Undergraduate Microeconomics Instruction," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(3), pages 227-246, September.
    15. Mark S. Walbert & Anthony L. Ostrosky, 1997. "Using Mathcad to Teach Undergraduate Mathematical Economics," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(4), pages 304-315, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David O'Sullivan & Mordechai Haklay, 2000. "Agent-Based Models and Individualism: Is the World Agent-Based?," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 32(8), pages 1409-1425, August.
    2. Fontana Magda, 2008. "The complexity approach to economics : a Paradigm shift," CESMEP Working Papers 200801, University of Turin.
    3. Nicolaas J. Vriend, 2002. "Was Hayek an Ace?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 68(4), pages 811-840, April.
    4. Jie-Shin Lin, 2005. "Learning in a Network Economy," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 25(1), pages 59-74, February.
    5. Roberto Leombruni, 2002. "The Methodological Status of Agent-Based Simulations," LABORatorio R. Revelli Working Papers Series 19, LABORatorio R. Revelli, Centre for Employment Studies.
    6. Halkos, George & Tsilika, Kyriaki, 2016. "Measures of correlation and computer algebra," MPRA Paper 70200, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. George E. Halkos & Kyriaki D. Tsilika, 2018. "Programming Correlation Criteria with free CAS Software," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 52(1), pages 299-311, June.
    8. Luke Olson & Max Jerrell & Ryder Delaloye, 2005. "A Computer Algebra Primer and Homework Exercises for use in an Intermediate Macroeconomics Course – A Student/Teacher Collaboration," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 26(3), pages 51-58, November.
    9. Kirman, Alan P. & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2001. "Evolving market structure: An ACE model of price dispersion and loyalty," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 25(3-4), pages 459-502, March.
    10. Julie Chytilová & Natálie Reichlová, 2007. "Komplexní systémy v teoriích F. A. Hayeka a H. A. Simona [Complex systems in the theories of F. A. Hayek and H. A . Simon]," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2007(5), pages 694-707.
    11. Mario Silic & Andrea Back, 2016. "The Influence of Risk Factors in Decision-Making Process for Open Source Software Adoption," International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 15(01), pages 151-185, January.
    12. Brendan Kennelly & John Considine & Darragh Flannery, 2011. "Online Assignments in Economics: A Test of Their Effectiveness," The Journal of Economic Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(2), pages 136-146, June.
    13. Francesco Cappa & Fausto Del Sette & Darren Hayes & Federica Rosso, 2016. "How to Deliver Open Sustainable Innovation: An Integrated Approach for a Sustainable Marketable Product," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(12), pages 1-14, December.
    14. Shuyue Huang & Lena Jingen Liang & Hwansuk Chris Choi, 2022. "How We Failed in Context: A Text-Mining Approach to Understanding Hotel Service Failures," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-18, February.
    15. Carlos Cortinhas, 2017. "Does formative feedback help or hinder students? An empirical investigation," Discussion Papers 1701, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    16. J.R. Clark & Joshua C. Hall & Ashley S. Harrison, 2017. "The Relative Value of AER P&P Economic Education Papers," Working Papers 17-23, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    17. Daoud, Adel & Kohl, Sebastian, 2016. "How much do sociologists write about economic topics? Using big data to test some conventional views in economic sociology, 1890 to 2014," MPIfG Discussion Paper 16/7, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    18. Harison, Elad & Koski, Heli, 2006. "Innovative Software Business Strategies: Evidence from Finnish Firms," Discussion Papers 1042, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    19. Alessandro Rossi & Alessandro Narduzzo, 2003. "Modular design and the development of complex artifact lesson fron free open source software," Quaderni DISA 080, Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento, Italy, revised 29 Sep 2003.
    20. Preston Greene, 2024. "Social bias, not time bias," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 23(1), pages 100-121, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Computer Algebra Systems; economic education; digital revolution; Maxima; Felix Klein;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A23 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics - - - Graduate
    • C02 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General - - - Mathematical Economics
    • C60 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - General
    • D57 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Input-Output Tables and Analysis

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:war:wpaper:2015-38. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Marcin Bąba (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fesuwpl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.