MATH 100 and 102

These are courses designed for students admitted with a deficiency in mathematics. Many of these students have a high level of resistance to and/or anxiety about mathematics. In two quarters they progress from order of operations and negative numbers to the quadratic formula. To deal with this rather ferocious pair of constraints, the courses are taught by a version of group discovery. Students do not work from a textbook, but instead from a workbook, whose Introduction explains to them the nature of the course. A number of the sections are taught by teaching assistants, for whom I act as observer, mentor, advisor, and occasionally sanity restorer. Instructors for the course receive an Instructor's Manual, likewise bearing an explanatory Introduction. A copy of my most recent syllabus is available.

MATH 103

This is the connector course between Math 102 and the standard pre-calculus course. It covers mainly trigonometry and functions, and features quite a lot of group work. A copy of my most recent syllabus is available.

MATH 107

This is a course designed for students who do not plan to major in math or science. Its main contents are exponential growth and probability, with some work on Huff's "How to Lie with Statistics" attached to the probability. A copy of my most recent syllabus is available.

MATH 170

This is a course for future elementary school teachers. My aim in it is to solidify students' understanding of the most basic concepts and skills they will be teaching--notably place value, fractions and problem solving--while developing their consciousness of how they and others around them actually learn. A copy of my most recent syllabus is available.

MATH 171

This is a course in geometry for future elementary school teachers. I am particularly attached to it, partly for the joy of opening up a whole world of beautiful and interesting mathematics to people whose concept of geometry had included exclusively formal Euclidean geometry, and partly because my work with in-service teachers who are trying to adapt to the NCTM Standards makes me conscious that the call for geometry teaching at the elementary level is one of the major producers of panic. A copy of my most recent syllabus is available.

MATH 497

This is a course which came into existence to provide some interesting mathematics at a time when K-12 teachers could attend. Any topic a faculty member wants to teach is fine. The constraints are that it must meet in a single chunk of time in the late afternoon and that it must stay interesting enough to keep a bunch of tired people awake. I have had the good fortune to teach it three times, doing Probability, Symmetry, and Graph Theory. A copy of my most recent syllabus is available.