Modified gram schmidt matlab code

Suggested Writing Assignments

1. Friedman believes that “the real secret of success in the information age is what it always was: fundamentals — reading, writing, and arithmetic; church, synagogue, and mosque;

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the rule of law; and good governance” (10). Do you agree? What are the fundamentals that you value most? Write a unified essay in which you discuss what you believe to be the secret of success today.

2. Who are your favorite teachers? What important differences did these people make in your life? What characteristics do these teachers share with Hattie M. Steinberg in this essay, Miss Bessie in Carl T. Rowan’s “Unforgettable Miss Bessie” (p. 369), or Anne Mansfield Sullivan in Helen Keller’s “The Most Important Day” (p. 101)? Using examples from your own school experience as well as from one or more of the essays noted above, write an essay in which you explore what makes a great teacher. Be sure to choose examples that clearly illustrate each of your points.

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The Most Important Day

Helen Keller

Helen Keller (1880–1968) was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. At the age of eighteen months, she was afflicted by a disease

that left her blind and deaf. With the aid of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, she was able to overcome her severe

handicaps, to graduate from Radcliffe College, and to lead a productive and challenging adult life. In the following

selection from her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1902), Keller tells of the day she first met Anne Sullivan, a day she

regarded as the most important in her life.

As you read, note that Keller maintains unity within her narrative by emphasizing the importance of the day her teacher

arrived, even though her story deals with the days and weeks following.

Reflecting on What You Know

Reflect on the events of what you consider “the most important day” of your life. Briefly describe what happened. Why

was that particular day so significant?

The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrast between the two lives which it connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old.

On the afternoon of that eventful day, I stood on the porch, dumb,6 expectant. I guessed vaguely from my mother’s signs and from the hurrying to and fro in the house that something unusual was about to happen, so I went to the door and waited on the steps. The afternoon sun penetrated the mass of honeysuckle that covered the porch and fell on my upturned face. My fingers lingered almost unconsciously on the familiar leaves and blossoms which had just come forth to greet the sweet southern spring. I did not know what the future held of marvel or surprise for me. Anger and bitterness had preyed upon me continually for

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weeks and a deep languor7 had succeeded this passionate struggle.

Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness

shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with

plummet and sounding-line,8 and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding-line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbor was. “Light! Give me light!” was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.

I felt approaching footsteps. I stretched out my hand as I supposed to my mother. Someone took it, and I was caught up and held close in the arms of her who had come to reveal all things to me, and, more than all things else, to love me.

The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me a doll. The

little blind children at the Perkins Institution9 had sent it and Laura Bridgman10 had dressed it; but I did not know this until afterward. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word “d-o-l-l.” I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkeylike imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this uncomprehending way a great many words, among them pin, hat, cup and a few verbs like sit, stand, and walk. But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a name.

One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my big rag doll into my lap also, spelled “d-o-l-l” and tried to make me understand that “d-o-l-l” applied to both. Earlier in the day we had had a tussle over the words “m-u-g” and “w-a-t-e-r.” Miss Sullivan had tried to impress it upon me that “m-u-g” is mug and that “w-a-t-e-r” is water, but I persisted in confounding the two. In despair she had dropped the subject for the time, only to renew it at the first opportunity. I became impatient at her repeated attempts and, seizing the new doll, I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly delighted when I felt the fragments of the broken doll at my feet. Neither sorrow nor regret followed my passionate outburst. I had not loved the doll. In the still, dark world in which I lived there was no strong sentiment or tenderness. I felt my teacher sweep the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I had a sense of satisfaction that the cause of my discomfort was removed. She brought me