INFORMATION

Math 497 Autumn 2008: Math Topics for Teachers

Instructor:

James King, Padelford C440, email king@math.washington.edu

Home page: www.math.washington.edu/~king

Office hours: Before class and Mondays 10-11 and Tuesdays 1-2, or by appointment.

General information about the course

Content: Counting problems in discrete math

Course format: Work on problems in groups during class. The group work and reflection on learning will be an important part of the course in addition to the math.

Homework: Some due each week, may be due prior to class. PLEASE MAKE A COPY of your homework for your own use while the work is out of your hands and being graded. (You can turn in the original or the copy, as you choose.)

Course Notebook: You should keep your work organized in a course notebook, written (for the most part) clearly enough that others can make some sense of it. This is partly because you will really need to refer back to earlier work, and it gives you a permanent product from your work. But it also will serve as a form of assessment that can be scanned to get an overall impression of your work.

Tests: Most assessment will be ongoing, with questions asked during any of the classes. But there will likely be some kind of midterm test during part of class 10/15 and also on 11/19. There will be a final, larger take-home assignment due the last class, 12/3. But this may change.

Textbook: No textbook, but there will be problems handed out each week. The problem sheets come from a course offered in Seattle and New Jersey last summer, with roots in the Park City Mathematics Institute, so there will be topical references to locations and summer that don’t quite fit, but the math should not be affected.

Course website and email list, etc: A website is coming. It will be linked to the instructor homepage above. We will likely use some of the Catalyst tools for communication and sharing on the web once the class is going.

Grades: A big part of the grade will be based on the in-class work. The class is really based on the assumption that everyone comes to class every time. In the real world it may be necessary for reasons of illness or other reasons to miss a class, but in that case the student is responsible to making up the work. But this must be exceptional, not a pattern. Classroom participation is a very important part of the grade.