Dr. Sarah's Math 1010 Class Highlights

Dr. Sarah's Math 1010 Class Highlights
The following is NOT HOMEWORK unless you miss part or all of the class. See the Main Class Web Page for ALL homework and due dates.

  • Mon Dec 7 Abstracts and evaluation.
  • Thur Dec 3 Discuss final project and abstract assignment.
  • Tues Dec 1 Collect project 6. Review. Pants activity. From this initial state, is this state possible?.
  • Mon Nov 30 Stock Market continued
  • Tues Nov 25 Test 2.
  • Mon Nov 23 Statistics Detective. Review for Test 3.
  • Thur Nov 19 Share from Project 5. Finish Stereotype vulnerability. Analyze and critique the items and discuss what we would like to back them up. Use the random sequence generator. Success in Classes. Ethics of data. We wish for many studies repeated by many people to attempt to isolate hidden, underlying issues. How should we personally and as a society respond (locally, globally) to statistical studies such as those that are environmental, like tuna fishing, etc.
  • Tues Nov 17 Collect the lab and go over it. Finish discussion on Heart of Mathematics. Critique media representations and predictions using both books:
    Elections, including Landon and Roosevelt, Buchanan and Gore, and Bush and Obama
    Modeling critiques for Project 5 via the theme of success in mathematics: Here's Good News... SAT scores are declining at a slower rate. Discuss the effect of teacher expectations on students. Review the biased MRT instructions. Discuss the SAT and whether the SAT should predict college scores. Stereotype vulnerability. Analyze and critique the items and discuss what we would like to back them up.
  • Mon Nov 16 Can We Predict the Future? Stocks, Class Data, and Raw Egg Regressions
  • Thur Nov 12 Nielsen Ratings and advertising spins. Volume median and mean. Does Volume predict high from stock graph. Do How Do You Know p. 185# 11. Discuss the actual predictor value, the estimated predictor values from a graph or via a line fit by eye, and related issues. Predicting height and solving a crime. Discuss Heart of Mathematics and next project.
  • Tues Nov 10 Discuss the lab. Music choices and compatibility issues (measuring "difference" in music tastes via looking at vertical distance between points) music 1, music 2. 1969 Vietnam draft data, introduction to scatterplot, line of best fit, and boxplots via Starr [relate to the theme of shifting viewpoint, like Andrew Wiles].
  • Mon Nov 9 Representations of Data lab.
  • Thur Nov 5 Finish the statistics of nature. Distance from home bar chart. Armspan bar chart. Height box plots. Worst graph intro, worst graphs, cover.
  • Tues Nov 3 Use the random number sequence generator to call on students to discuss the measures of centers homework and to share from Chapter 3 Section 1 of How Do You Know. Review bar chart of volume of stocks from lab including how you can tell whether the mean will be above or below the median using the idea of a scale balance. Discuss sampling versus census. Discuss mathematical proof versus statistical significance. Histogram of the ASULearn random number from 1 to 10. experiment and Excel analyses, including expected value of 5.2 and briefly mention the chi test and p-value (are the observations statistically significant or can the differences be ascribed to random variations of chance?) Discuss whether the human mind can provide a random number. GE experiment. Begin to go over the statistics of nature.
  • Mon Nov 2
    1) Anonymous Class Data Collection on ASULearn.
    2) Stock Market Data Collection
    3) Statistics of Nature
  • Thur Oct 29 Test 2.
  • Tues Oct 27 Finish the condo and car lab. Take questions on the study guide and the ASULearn Material Review Questions for Test 2. Review problems.
  • Mon Oct 26 Condo and Car Purchases: Decisions Decisions
  • Thur Oct 22 Credit card statement and payday loan. Philosophy. Begin Condo and Car Purchases: Decisions Decisions
  • Tues Oct 20 Discuss interest rates, currency, and debt in NC, the US, and the world. Richard Feynman quotation: There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. Go over ways to build good credit. Student loan statement.
  • Mon Oct 19 Ben Franklin part 2.
  • Tues Oct 13 Go over $37 problems and formulas. Go over Jane and Joan extra credit (excel sheet) by using goal seek to discuss what interest rate would result in equal savings for them both. Do problems by hand and/or on Excel. Picture of Excel work, Excel work file, Picture of Excel solutions, Excel solution file. Go over main class web page and Ben Franklin writing project. Highlight the Dec 2002 $315 Powerball winner in Hurricane, West Virginia who had a choice of 30 annual payments or one lump sum payment of $170.5 million.
  • Mon Oct 12 Ben Franklin's Will - Part 1
  • Thur Oct 8 Review lump sum formula and the philosophy we used to come up with it and review how much we will end up with if $100 is deposited into an account and left alone for 25 years, compounded monthly at 5%. Compare to $100 deposited every month into an account and left alone for 25 years, compounded monthly at 5%. Work towards periodic payment understanding and compare the philosophy to the lump sum formula derivation and to Andrew Wiles and Fermat's Last Theorem (philosophy slides). Transparencies from class $100 is deposited each month for 12 years into an account compounding 5% monthly. Intro to Goal Seek and Solver in Excel via Lisa's Thrifty Savers savings account from Bart the Fink. Discuss other possibilities for unknowns - the time length, the rate, or the number of times compounding per year,
  • Tues Oct 6 Search for the history of taxation.
    History and ethics of charging interest for the use of land, animals, money.
    Plimpton Cuneiform 322 and interpreting data
    Usury is Piracy Discuss 142 years compounding monthly versus annually. Each student comes up with their own formula. Discuss what you would do if you had $1 million to spend in 24 hours and the ethics of spending. Real-life bank situation. Past student was told that her c.d. will be compounded monthly at 8% for 8 months, and is told that this 8% will apply each and every month. Let's say that she put in $1000. How much would her c.d. be worth at the end of 8 months? What did the bank really mean?
  • Mon Oct 5 Begin simple interest. Look at the IRS webpage and the 1040 form. Search for Homer's paycheck Fill out Homer's taxes.
    Quotes on taxes.
  • Thur Oct 1 Presentations on
    Stephen Hawking (1942 - )
    Quote, Stephen Hawking's Universe
    Bill Gates (1955-):
    Flipping pancakes,
    David X Cohen (1966 - ) Burnt pancakes, Bacteria Pancakes, Article, E. Hop.
    Discuss the themes of this segment.
    Begin finance. How much money do you have with you? Discuss the themes of the previous segments and relate them to finance.
  • Tues Sep 29 Presentations on
    Alan Turing (1912-1954):
    Pilot Ace Turing Test ALICE Plays Turing's Original Imitation Game Can Computers Win the Turing Test?
    David Blackwell (1919-):
    Friend or Foe
    John Nash (1928):
    Nash Equilibrium, Nash Equilibrium
  • Mon Sep 28 Presentations on
    Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)
    Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, Polyhedra, Vitruvian Man, mathematics and art
    Thomas Fuller (1710-1790):
    One of Fuller's calculations, calculating ability of the human brain, calculating ability of computers
    Maria Agnesi (1718-1799):
    Living Witch of Agnesi, big picture overview of calculus
  • Thur Sep 24 Carolyn Gordon worksheet. Meet with groups about their mathemaician project.
  • Tues Sep 22 Andrew Wiles worksheet.
  • Mon Sep 21 The Proof. Hand back test 1.
  • Thur Sep 17 Test 1.
  • Tues Sep 15 Play a section from Flatland the Movie. Portal. Go over and finish the lab. Take questions. Euclidean 10 Euclidean possibilities, including Escher's "Another World" and the Futurama video reference to Escher's 1953 "Relativity" when Fry and Bender look for an apartment. Spherical a number of the infinite but known spherical possibilities via Davide Cervone's Spheres Sliced in 2D and 3D and excerpts from Week's paper on Topological Lensing in Spherical Spaces page 1, page 12, and the relationship to the Spherical Applet, and Hyperbolic current mathematical attempts to classify the hyperbolic possibilities, including the Weeks example. Review current attempts including Cosmology News. Examine Curved Spaces (Basic spaces with the Galaxy view).
  • Mon Sep 14 Universe lab [didn't finish]


  • Thur Sep 10 Collect reflections on the hw readings. Time for questions or comments. Address connections to Tuesday's class. Go over problems 8, 9, and 10. Jeff Weeks worksheet. Brief intro to my own research and how it fits into these ideas, and my mathematical style in a digital presentation that is a model for the next segment. Highlight the theme of diverse ways to succeed in mathematics and "making the material your own." The Shape of Space Video - this 11-minute animated video produced by The Geometry Center introduces the two-dimensional space of flatland, looks at possible shapes for flatland from the perspective of three dimensions, and represents those shapes of space in two dimensions. Then the animation uses the same kind of representation to look at possible shapes for three-dimensional space. Viewers are taken on a ride across the boundless three-dimensional surface of a three-torus and a four-dimensional Klein bottle. As viewers see these imaginary universes from inside the spaceship, they experience the illusion of seeing copies of the universes. I, Roommate from Futurama universe activity.
  • Tues Sep 8 Go over Project 2 problems 1-7, and briefly discuss problems 8-11.
  • Thur Sep 3 Selections cut from PBS Life by the Numbers: Seeing is Believing Video: Modern artists and mathematicians are trying to grapple with the 4th physical dimension. Mathematics helps define space and helps present visions of our world to us. Tom Banchoff as a mathematician. Shape of the World video: Viewers see how mathematics has become a tool to explore the heavens as the cosmos is charted. Class concentrates on what our universe looks like, how we know, and how we represent it. Discuss the video. Hand back project 1 and go over the grading. Count number of letters in first name and pair up with someone who has the same number of letters and find something you have in common. Then share the names and the commonality. Reflect on the relationship to class - start with a topic, look at it from a mathematical viewpoint, find common patterns, and relate it back to real-life.
  • Tues Sep 1 Share from the lab from Monday or the round earth homework reading. Go over the Klein bottle as a Euclidean universe, and the 2-holed torus as a non-Euclidean universe. Where is North? Review Escher's space. Discuss a computer model of Escher's space called hyperbolic geometry. Discuss physical models of small pieces of hyperbolic space. Extra credit crochet model of hyperbolic geometry (for me to keep).
          Sketchpad - Straight Lines in Hyperbolic Geometry       Image.
    Discuss the sum of the angles in a triangle as well as the Pythagorean Theorem in Hyperbolic geometry via the hyperbolic worksheet.
  • Angle sum
  • Pythagorean theorem Discuss the problems in Project 2
  • Mon Aug 31 2D Universes Lab
  • Thur Aug 27 Share something from the readings on perspective drawing, the syllabus, or class on Tuesday. Learning evaluations. ASULearn Postings. Readings and Activities on Perspective Drawing and Projective Geometry. Escher and the mathematical clues he left in his work: Sun and Moon.   Worksheet on Escher.   (number 2). Quotes from Escher on how he does mathematics and where it comes from. Discuss whether mathematics arises from nature or whether we impose our mathematical discoveries onto nature. 2-D creature movements of the caterpillar turning into a 3-D movement butterfly. PacMan sequence from Futurama (Anthology of Interest II) and a tiling view versus folding up the space (where PacMan would see his back which would look like a piece of a circle or a flat line to him). Davide Cervone's Cube Projections.
  • Tues Aug 25 Fill out index sheets. Introductions. Brief intro to the course. Begin geometry of our earth and universe. Discuss How could we tell that the earth is round instead of flat without using any technology (ie if we were ancient Greeks)? Make a list of ideas on the board. Watch 10 minute video excerpts and prepare to share something to discuss: Life By the Numbers Shape of the World (maps of the earth) and Seeing is Believing (perspective). Write down something you found interesting, disagreed with, or that you wish had been shown. Highlight the questions of what our world looks like, how we know, and how we represent it. Highlight Danny Glover's discussion that the earth is finite but has no edges, that a flat map of the earth must contain some distortion, and Sam Edgerton's views that perspective -> industrial revolution, that perspective is learned - not innate, and that we must distort the work to give the illusion of depth. Apply ideas to Are The Simpsons 2-D or 3-D?.