Day 01, MAT115, Fall 2011

Next Time

Welcome!
Some thoughts for the day, and for the course:
- For you to be successful, your attitude is as important as your ability.
- What you do shows what you are.
3x5 cards: Please fill out the card, indicating
1. Name
2. Year (Freshman, etc.)
3. Major
4. Hometown
5. Birthday (just month and day)
6. Something special about yourself.
The syllabus.
- Class will be organized around discussions of material, and activities. You must be prepared to contribute! My role will be to present and help clarify, but preferably to moderate discussions, and be a resource.
- I find that students are best at explaining ideas to other students. So what I shoot for is some students to get the idea in class, and then to "infect" the rest of the students.
- If you're expecting this to be a "practical math" course, you will be disappointed. This is a course incorporating material for a broad range of liberal arts disciplines. Some of them will be interesting to you, some of them may not. But this is not another algebra course. You may never have seen any mathematics quite like the things that we're going to study in this course!
The course agreement (regrettably necessary)
Your first assignment (due Friday!).
Our goal is more than just mathematics -- there are "Lessons for life" that we should focus on:
1. Just do it. Jump in. Make mistakes and fail, but never give up.
2. Keep an open mind.
3. Understand simple things deeply.
4. Break a difficult problem into easier ones.
5. Look for patterns and similarities.
6. Explore the consequences of new ideas. Generalize.
7. Examine issues from several points of view.
  
  Don't be a turkey -- be a dog! (this one may require a little explanation....)
Question of the day:

What's the probability that two people in this room have the same birthday?
Perhaps you have some other questions:
- What is probability? What's the probability that a die comes up 5? 6? 5 or 6? (This is the focus of your first reading.)
- Is there such a thing as "being due"? If my probability of making a freethrow in basketball is 1/2, and I miss this shot, will I (of necessity) make the next? If I miss three in a row, am I due?
- Betting (and odds) is an equivalent way of thinking about this: how much would you bet against my bet of $10 that there will be two people in this room with the same birthday?
  Even money (odds)? If so, then you would be saying that the probability of there being two people with the same birthday is 1/2.

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