This was a handout that I made for my Discrete Mathematics class. At our college this course is the gateway to the mathematics major and is the students’ introduction to writing mathematical arguments. Here is a pdf of the handout. The nuts and bolts of writing mathematics You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly…
Tag: Teaching
Student podcasts in a history of mathematics course
I would like to take this opportunity to showcase some of my students’ work from last year. I taught a class called “Great Theorems and Ideas in Mathematics.” It was an upper-level history of mathematics course with a focus on some of mathematics’ greatest theorems. I used William Dunham‘s Journey Through Genius for a good…
Wobbly tables and the intermediate value theorem
Tomorrow I’ll be introducing the intermediate value theorem (IVT) to my calculus class. Recall the statement of the IVT: if is a continuous function on the interval and is between and , then there exists a value such that . In other words, achieves all of the intermediate values between and . This is a very underappreciated theorem…
Line Rider Calculus
The first time I saw Line Rider in action, I knew I should use it for a calculus class, but I didn’t know how. Recently 360 wrote about using Line Rider in a calculus course, and so did Teaching College Math, who suggested creating a video of the action using the screen capture software Jing. This week’s topic in…
David Richeson: Division by Zero 