Answers to an Hypothetical Students' Questionnaire

by Professor Robert T. (Bob) Moore

(2006 Edition)

0. Purpose:

My questionnaires ask you to reveal various personal facts, so it's only fair to share some similar information about my background and interests, with emphasis upon how that might affect my teaching in your class.

1. Undergraduate Study:

I attended Swarthmore College, a small (then 800-student) liberal arts college near Philadelphia, PA. I had a full-time scholarship from the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, which I won for a mathematics project in senior high. I majored in physics and mathematics, with a minor in philosophy (of science and language). My "classes" during the last two years were seminars (8-9 units each, two per term), which covered a year's material in a semester through student lectures and discussion. (These had 5-8 students plus a professor/advisor who commented while we lectured and helped us get straightened out when the student presenter got off the track.) I liked the mathematics that was used in physics, and the parts of physics that used a lot of math (like linear algebra, differential equations, in relativity and quantum theory.) I prefer small classes and I encourage students to work together on reading and figuring out what's wanted in the homework and in computer labs when my classes include these (but not on homework answers and not on Take-Home exams!). You can often help each other as much as I can help you!

2. Graduate Study:

I started graduate work at Princeton University in physics, but soon discovered that I was really more interested in inventing new mathematical tools for physics than I was in discovering new physics (which often is not ready for a careful mathematical treatment until years after the excitement of discovery has worn off: that's true of most scientific and engineering breakthroughs.) So I got my Ph.D. in mathematics in 1964, developing tools used to describe "symmetry" in quantum theory, to study and classify elementary (sub-atomic) particles. Many of the topics covered in our linear algebra and differential equations classes here are elementary forms of the main tools I use in my research. I also served as a TA in calculus and advanced calculus, and then as a post-doctoral calculus instructor at Princeton.

3. Summer Jobs:

I worked as a student trainee at the National Bureau of Standards, using early computers to do applied mathematics (statistics, antenna design) and data processing (machine translation of languages, automatic theorem proving, pattern recognition, and computer patent searching). We'd call this "applied computer science" today. We used some of the topics that I now teach in linear algebra (Math 308-9) and numerical analysis (Math 464-5-6) in our applied work. This experience has strongly influenced my computer labs, especially toward "applications."

4. Teaching in Berkeley:

I served as an Instructor and Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of California in Berkeley from 1964 to 1968, teaching many kinds of "pure math" courses, but few of the topics I now teach here. Those were the years of the Free Speech Movement, the hippie/flower-power times, and the beginning of the anti-Vietnam-War movement, all of which followed me to Seattle when I was offered tenure as an Associate Professor here in 1968. I continued my research in the area of my Princeton thesis, but in a more general form.

5. Teaching at the UW:

I taught a mixture of "pure" and "applied" mathematics courses from the beginning of my experience here. But I specialized at first in linear algebra and applied analysis (427-8-9) from 1968 to the mid-1970's. Later, I became very interested in using programmable pocket calculators and computers for research and instruction. (I used a small Texas Instruments programmable calculator to discover some new theorems using numerical experiments and data-analysis.)

I experimented with "calculator calculus labs" and served as the faculty advisor for the "Association of Calculator Programmers" (a student-faculty-staff club on campus). I later shifted my teaching mostly to differential equations (now 307) and numerical analysis (464-5-6), where calculators and computers were first useful. Later, I moved back into linear algebra (where the syllabus and computers have recently been converging.) I'm still experimenting with the best ways to teach this material to the current generation of students, using current technology. My Math 387 supplementary Maple labs for some Math 308 classes during the last 5 years have been part of the experimentation – most recently in Winter 2003.

6. Undergraduate Advising and Curriculum:

I have served as an advisor for math majors, mostly in applied math, and on the Undergraduate Curriculum and Text Committee, where I have watched many changes in student interests and preparation, as well as in the curriculum. When I came here in 1968, we spread calculus over four quarters, with quite a bit of emphasis on theory, and both linear algebra and advanced calculus were very theoretical. Later, calculus shrank to 3 quarters with an optional "theory of calculus" course offered the second year, and an "applied advanced calculus" was introduced that eventually replaced the theoretical one. Much of the old "theory" in linear algebra has now been moved to a new 318, and some of the theory in advanced calculus was until recently put in Math 329, and is now spread over the new Math 325-326.

Quite some time ago, differential equations and linear algebra were merged into the present less theoretical Math 307-8-9 "linear analysis" sequence. I participated in revising the Math 308-309 curriculum in 1990, leading to the current syllabus, which tries to introduce a few applications to the real world and sometimes offers Math 387 computer labs in differential equations and linear algebra to help math majors satisfy their computing requirements. I also review manuscripts for linear algebra textbooks and calculator/computer lab books for calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra and the software they use (below.) I've recently been testing the Lay textbook to see if we should switch all of our 308 classes (and details of our syllabus) to this book. In Winter/Spring 1999, Winter 2000 and Autumn 2001, I taught sections of Math 309 to see how Lay 308 preparation works for Math 309 (with some of my past Lay-308 folks enrolled.) I'm now revising my Math 308 Lay syllabus to improve that aspect of Math 308.

7. Interactive Text, NSF LAMP Grant, and Addison Wesley Project:

I participated in several earlier grant projects with IBM and the NSF for equipment and assistance to improve instructional and research computing on campus. I also serve as a pre-release tester of matrix algebra software packages (with symbolic computation and graphics) Derive and Matlab (for PCs), Maple and Mathematica (for Macs and PCs), and the HP-48 and TI 85 handheld calculators. I also have the newer HP-49G "CAS" calculator.

I was selected as an "Interactive Mathematical Text Developer," with an award of a computer to use with Maple for Windows to develop a "Lab textbook on a disk" for teaching/learning linear algebra. I taught two "open enrollment" Math 387 labs Spring and Fall 1993, and five very different versions more recently, where students who were taking my Math 308 class had to enroll to learn how to use Maple to solve realistically big problems in applied linear algebra. The standard syllabus is crowded, so I usually can't fit in as much computer assistance as I'd like, for classes that don't include required labs, but I still show (and post on the website) a few examples especially using computer graphics. In 1995 I and three colleagues from the Interactive Mathematical Text Project were awarded a National Science Foundation Course and Curriculum Development grant for developing a complete "linear algebra textbook on a disk," using newer versions of the Maple software. It has served varied student populations and courses on our three campuses: Grinnell College in Iowa, Seattle Central Community College, and UW. This Linear Algebra Module Project (LAMP) involved collaboration during the summers of 1995-2000, and testing our materials in Math 308/387 Labs taught here in 1996 - 2003. Our publisher Addison Wesley finally published these materials in 2001, on paper and CD-ROM, using new versions of Maple (Maple 6, 7 and 8, etc) with better linear algebra features. Our class does not include these Maple labs.