ESP Biography



TAYLOR CAMPBELL, ESP Teacher




Major: Not available.

College/Employer: Not available.

Year of Graduation: Not available.

Picture of Taylor Campbell

Brief Biographical Sketch:

I'm a Scheme programmer of many years. I've been around MIT for a long time, having taken & taught many HSSP, Splash, & MIT courses, and I'm a developer of MIT Scheme, used in many of MIT's courses; I also teach & tutor many people informally in subjects of programming and computer science.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

M1360: Talking Math in Spark! Spring 2008 (Mar. 08, 2008)
Mathematics is a language for expressing ideas precisely. But novices to the language can be easily baffled by the maze of twisty formalisms and informalisms one finds in mathematical texts, and high school often leaves students thoroughly unprepared to study what mathematicians consider mathematics. This course will cover the basics of logic, sets, relations, functions, and the bizarrely elusive idea of numbers; the concept of infinity, infinite sets, and why you'll never hit a rational number on a dart board of real numbers; and all those funny words like lemma, theorem, corollary, proposition, and proof.


M1362: Building Calculus in Spark! Spring 2008 (Mar. 08, 2008)
Often calculus is taught as a collection of symbolic methods for calculating derivatives and integrals. But the whys and wherefores of these methods are left as hand-waving `infinitesimals', and there is a rich array of mathematical ideas that we shall explore as we build the calculus not from infinitesimals but from basic mathematical objects such as sets and functions. This course is not about specific techniques to answer AP questions; instead, it will emphasize the meaning and physical intuition of ideas in calculus, and how to think about solving problems.


M1363: Making Sense of Calculus in Spark! Spring 2008 (Mar. 08, 2008)
You've taken a class titled `Calculus' in high school, and you have probably been inundated with d's and elongated S's that you had to juggle until you got the right answer. Perhaps you took the AP exam, or plan to, and memorized tables of integrals to get a five on it. But calculus isn't just about pushing symbols! In this class we shall discuss not how to whack at symbols until an answer falls out, but what it all really means -- or at least, the meaning of what we can fit in two hours!


M1359: Talking Math in HSSP Spring 2008 (Mar. 15, 2008)
Mathematics is a language for expressing ideas precisely. But novices to the language can be easily baffled by the maze of twisty formalisms and informalisms one finds in mathematical texts, and high school often leaves students thoroughly unprepared to study what mathematicians consider mathematics. This course will cover the basics of logic, sets, relations, functions, and the bizarrely elusive idea of numbers; the concept of infinity, infinite sets, and why you'll never hit a rational number on a dart board of real numbers; and all those funny words like lemma, theorem, corollary, proposition, and proof.


M1361: Building Calculus in HSSP Spring 2008 (Mar. 15, 2008)
Often calculus is taught as a collection of symbolic methods for calculating derivatives and integrals. But the whys and wherefores of these methods are left as hand-waving `infinitesimals', and there is a rich array of mathematical ideas that we shall explore as we build the calculus not from infinitesimals but from basic mathematical objects such as sets and functions. This course is not about specific techniques to answer AP questions; instead, it will emphasize the meaning and physical intuition of ideas in calculus, and how to think about solving problems.


Fundamentals of Computation in HSSP (2006)
What exactly is computation? What can a computer do, and what can't it do? And what the heck is a ...


Introduction to programming in HSSP (2006)
In this course, we will introduce many fundamental and more advanced concepts of the theory and practice of computer science, ...


Scheming Beyond 6.001 in FIREHOSE (2006)
You've taken 6.001. All you know of Scheme is what little was shown of it to express ideas in computer ...


Category Theory in SPLASH (2006)
Mathematics too boring for you? Too concrete? Too practical and applicable? Then come to this class to hear about the ...


Mathematics Made Difficult in SPLASH (2006)
So you think you can count. You think you can add, subtract, multiply, and divide. You think that these are ...