Lynchburg
College Summer
2015 Syllabus
for MATH
606 Math Explorations |
|
Instructor: Dr. Kevin Peterson
Office: Hobbs 314 Office Phone: (434)
544-8374
Email: peterson@lynchburg.edu
COURSE OBJECTIVES
Students will meet these
goals by achieving the following objectives:
Course Projects: Students will hand in a
detailed typed report for each project. In this course you should not
confuse the written project with "showing your work". Instead
your written work should indicate to the reader how well you understand the
mathematical concepts you have used in your solution. A list of
calculations without reasoning is not mathematics. When writing each
project your goal will be to communicate your solutions to another person
rather than to show you've completed the assignment. Students will be expected
to write clearly and carefully. There is
no required length or word count. Each
project write up should be exactly as long as it needs to be to convey the
required ideas. Hence you will not feel
pressure to omit required details or add padding to meet an arbitrary length
requirement. With this in mind each
write up must include the following:
a.
Exploration give a brief description of the explorations you performed and explain
how they were used to arrive at your conjecture. If you had a brilliant falsh of insght that revealed
the conjecture to you, then include several specific examples that will help the reader understand both the
problem and your conjecture. You must
describe how these examples helped you to generate a conjecture and/or
understand the problem. If you used a computer program to generate examples
attach a copy of the code and output (as an appendex). b.
Conjecture: After your exploration, you will be ready to make a conjecture
about the problem. The conjectures should be clearly stated and
labeled. c.
Proof: Provide a complete and rigorous mathematical proof. There should be no gaps in your explanation.
Clearly define each mathematical term and variable in the problem. Other than results from high school algebra,
include the full statement of any
theorem that was needed to solve the problem.
Results from high school algebra should be labeled HSA.
a.
Summary: Include brief summary of the problem, highlighting the parts that
you felt were most interesting or surprising. Compare your
"gut-feeling", if you had one, to your actual solution explaining any
differences. b.
Further Work: Finally, state at least 3 new problems that are related to the
original problem that you would like to investigate in the future. These problems should be individually
numbered and should be a clearly and carefully (with all the detail) stated in
the same fashion as the original problem. The reader should not need to know
the original problem to understand the new problems. Grading: All projects will be graded using the
following rubric:
Late projects: All projects are due at 10:00 pm on the
listed due date. Late projects will NOT
be accepted. Grading: All projects will be
graded and returned within 48 hours of the due date. Students will be notified immediately of any
change to this policy. Communication Policy: Most communications for this course will
be through email. From Monday-Thursday
from 11:00 am – 1:00 pm EST, I will answer email questions within 2 hours. Email questions sent outside this range will
be answered within 24 hours. Likewise,
students will be expected to respond to emails about this course within 24
hours. ADA Statement: Lynchburg College is committed to providing all students equal access to learning opportunities. The Disability Services Coordinator (DSC) works with eligible students with disabilities (medical, physical, mental health and cognitive) to make arrangements for appropriate, reasonable accommodations. Students registered with the DSC whoreceive approved accommodations are required to provide letters of accommodation each semester to each professor. A meeting to discuss accommodations the student wishes to implement in individual courses is strongly suggested. Accommodations are not retroactive and begin when the accommodation letter is provided to faculty. For information about requesting accommodations, please visit http://www.lynchburg.edu/disability-services, or contact Julia Timmons, timmons.j@lynchburg.edu, phone (434)-544-8687. Grades: Your course grade will be based on 6 individual
projects each worth 40 points. There are 240 points
possible. The grades will be given on the following scale A+: 235-240 A : 210-234 A-: 204-209 B+: 198-203 B-: 168-173 C+: 162-167
Course web page: Any modifications to the course policies and/or course syllabus will be announced on the course web page and on the Moodle course page. |