Formal Course Description

Topics from contemporary mathematics, their development, applications, and role in society. Some typical topics, to be chosen by the instructor: graph theory, topology, statistical inference, coding, game theory, geometry, and symmetry.

Course Commentary

This course was a lot of fun to teach while providing its own set of distinct challenges. Math 112 is a mathematics elective course that satisfies the mathematics requirement for students in the arts and humanities, and is an alternative to taking a traditional precalculus or calculus course. Offered once per year, I taught this course in Winter Quarter, 2012. I was given complete curricular freedom with this course and I chose to treat it as a tour of advanced topics that are normally found in an undergraduate math curriculum. We covered topics in geometry, number theory, cryptography, topology, and statistics. I had a particular emphasis on making advanced topics accessible and enjoyable to my audience of students majoring in theater, music, political science, and English. 

One of my favorite parts of this course was the first assignment: the students had to write a 1-2 page math autobiography detailing which courses they have taken in their academic lives, their experiences with math broadly, and why they were taking my course. I greatly enjoyed reading about their positive and negative experiences with math courses, and appreciated their honesty and candid description of their unique mathematical experiences. This assignment gave me a deeper understanding of my students and their attitudes towards mathematics, and allowed me to shape my course into a user-friendly experience.