Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
chapter 1
About
Pre-Calculus
It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and
how many more believe learning to be difficult.
—
Frank Herbert,
Dune
(from ''The Humanity of Maud'Dib''
by the Princess Irulan)
This topic attempts, among other things, to present math in a fairly open-ended way.
It offers what youmight view as a conversational approach tomath, which is an older
way of teachingmath. If you survey the history of math topics, you see that a hundred
or more years ago authors often tended to teach math using dialogues. In other
words, as a reader you would follow a conversation among two or more characters in
a dialogue, much along the lines of reading a play. That is not precisely the way this
topic unfolds, but it is in the background. This topic draws from experiences of
teaching in computer game development and play settings. When you learn to
develop or play a computer game, you seldom stand back and spend a long while
learning formal rules. Instead, you follow a path that involves immediately immers-
ing yourself in playing or developing the game. This topic tries to follow the same
path. It attempts to make learning about math more an activity of conversation than
of applying rules. Your study of math then becomes a relaxed form of conversation.
To explore this notion in a bit more detail, this chapter offers the following topics:
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Language and conversation
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Visual Formula as a way to play games with math
Starting the conversation with algebra and trigonometry
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