Prealgebra via Python Programming

Abstract

This book was written for students and instructors who want to learn how to use a computer for other than the most common uses, such as web browsing, document creation, or paying bills online. This book is for anyone who wants to perform computational tasks that they design. In other words, if you wish to learn how to program a computer, this book is for you. Because prealgebra is a subject that practically everyone is supposed to learn in grade school, it provides a platform to introduce basic computer programming concepts. Consequently, this book should also be of interest to students in middle or high school who want to learn how to program, and who are willing to invest the time and effort in learning a programming language that they could continue using throughout their schooling and in their professional life. Similarly, this book could also be of interest to pre-service and in-service mathematics teachers wishing to have at their disposal a complementary tool to assist in fostering understanding, competency, and interest in mathematics among their students. This book can be integrated with the teachers’ curriculum as way to tackle non-traditional math problems using an inexpensive modern computer language. By the end of the book, a reader will have learned enough to be able to write a preliminary, step-by-step one variable equation solver that can be expanded in the future to use with more complex equations. In other words, by the end of the book, you will be able to write code that programs their machines to solve equations. This code is foundational and readers are ecouraged to learn on their own how to build on it to suit their mathematics learning needs.