ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s there has been a steady decline in number of doctorates in mathematics, physics, and engineering awarded to Americans by U. S. colleges and universities. At the American Mathematical Society centennial celebration in 1988, some mathematicians called the current approach to calculus instruction “a national scandal.” To begin with, skeptics could challenge the comparison on the ground that experimenters are eager or forced to produce positive conclusions from the experiment. In this calculus project, randomization was not possible in that institution. It should be noted that there is nothing wrong with being enthusiastic about one’s experiment—that is the driving force of all scientific progress. More importantly, the extrinsic evaluation has the potential to carry on the mission of this one-year project and make computers a permanent part of calculus instruction on that campus. A major weakness of the traditional approach to teaching is that students are so overwhelmed by formulas that they seldom try to reason from basics.
