"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:4a19b3f8$1@news.povray.org...

> Is there any other field of endeavor where a phrase like
> """
> Like all of my examples it's one of those super-simple examples; small
> enough to be unreal, but hopefully enough for you to visualize what's
going
> on without falling into the bog of a real example.
> """
> is common?  Where people teach principles with overly-simplified and
> unrealistic bits because doing it for real is too obscure?

Sure. Just because CS is the field you are most familiar with doesn't mean
it's the only field where examples are simplified and unrealistic.

> I mean, it's like saying "here we have Literature 101 class, where we
don't
> read actual books, but just abstracts, because the real books are too
long."
> Or "here we're going to look at line drawings of injuries, because looking
> at real injuries is too complicated for teaching medicine."
>
> Maybe grade-school science works that way? But that isn't really teaching
> science as much as it's teaching results, IME.

You may think simple harmonic oscillator, for instance, is grade school
stuff, but one-dimensional (no less - or, well, no more) simple harmonic
oscillator is pretty much the de facto testbed of introducing concepts all
the way through undergrate to graduate physics classes. Nobody learns QFT
using anywhere near realistic models.

Same with engineering and other sciences (including economics). Complicated
concepts are first introduced with super-simplified, idealistic setups at
all stages of learning.

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