context appropriate exercise on functions

[brownsarahm]

the exercise in the functions episode has learners compute math that's not on topic. It is a good exercise in that it is self contained, requires no unrelated programming knowledge, and the 2 part-nature: it allows them to think about the idea of returning one vs many values in a function.

this is a good place for a social scientist to comment.

[awhobbs]

We could use an isoelastic utility function for the single-return function and a CES utility function for the multiple-return example, returning a vector of demands for goods (those are choices kind of specific to the particular social science of economics, but I'm not sure what functions other social scientists use).

[brownsarahm]

We used the following when we taught this earlier this month, it's still sort of abstract, but doesn't require any specific domain knowledge.

1. Write a function that takes in a first name and surname and returns the user name of the person that is the first letter of the first name and the whole surname",
1. Suppose you also want the user's display name, their full name as one string, write this function as well. Would I (or should I) have two separate functions or could I write a single function to provide both values together?