Extra Credit Opportunities

Extra Credit is something that is related to the class and would be good to do, but not required due to time constraints. I advise that you spend time revising your Ben F and mathematician writing assignments and taking WebCT quizzes 6-9 before you think about extra credit.

From the syllabus: There will be other extra credit opportunities during the semester for which points will accumulate. When final grades are given, extra credit points are taken into account in the determination of -,nothing or + attached to a letter grade.

  • Extra credit crochet model of the hyperbolic plane (for me to keep). Go to the website Construction of Hyperbolic Planes and scroll down to 2. How to Crochet the Hyperbolic Plane for directions.

  • Research and report back as to whether the golden mean is also thought of as beautiful and aesthetically pleasing in non-Western cultures

  • Find and attend a real-life debate. Extra credit if you summarize the debate and give some examples of how statistics and critical thinking methods were used in the debate. (ie were stats used to back up a point? What stats were quoted? Did they twist the stats for their own use?)

  • Provide several real-life situations - ideally, from your own experience - for which some of our strategies of thought and inquiry would provide effective methods for approaching and resolving them.

  • Perspective Drawing extra credit (work of art)

  • Beachball activity to prove that the sum of the angles of a spherical triangle is always greater than 180 degrees

  • Extra Credit Problem on the geometry of the earth and universe

  • Show that
      x   =   cos(a) sin(b)
      y   =  sin(a) sin(b)
      z   =   cos(b)
    satisfies the equation x^2 + y^2 +z^2 = 1
    Recall that we used the above coordinations to show that the surface of a sphere is 2D because it only requires longitude and latitude.

  • Choose a mathematical topic that you are interested in that we have not covered, research to find numerous references on it, and then write up a report in your own words. (For example, What is a fractal)

  • Anything that I mentioned would count for extra credit over the course of the semester.