MAT 115: Mathematics for Liberal Arts

• Syllabus
• Assignments
• Office hours (all office hours are by Zoom): MW 11:00-12:00; MW 4:00-5:00; TR 2:00-3:00. If those won't work -- just email me! I'll find some other time.
• If you need to Zoom to class, here's the link. (A page of the zooms and the play-by-plays)
• Daily Agendas:

  Chapter 1: Covid and testing (applied math) Day 01 (1/19): Welcome, masked students! Day 02 (1/21): Covid Modeling (graphs) Day 03 (1/24): Covid Vaccine status (trees) Day 04 (1/26): Breast Cancer Testing (trees) Day 05 (1/28): Covid Testing (more tree practice) Chapter 2: Number Love, and graphs and trees Day 06 (1/31): What is six? Day 07 (2/2): Rock Groups and Primes Day 08 (2/7): Primes and one-to-oneness Day 09 (2/9): The Great Fraudini/Primitive Counting Day 10 (2/11): Binary Factorization Day 11 (2/14): Yanghui's triangle Day 12 (2/16): Pascal's triangle, and Facebook Day 13 (2/18): How many Facebooks? Day 14 (2/21): Bridges of Konigsburg Day 15 (2/23): Review for Exam 1 Day 16 (2/25): Exam 1 Day 17 (2/28): Euler paths and Planar graphs

  "Chapter 3": Ancient Numbers Day 18 (3/2): Babylonian and Mayan Mathematics Day 19 (3/4): Writing like Babylonians and Mayans Day 20 (3/14): Egyptian multiplication Day 21 (3/16): Egyptian division Day 22 (3/18): Egyptian division -- the end times.... Day 23 (3/21): Fraudini Nim Day 24 (3/23): Fibonacci Nim! Day 25 (3/25): Climate Strike! Day 26 (3/28): More Fibonaccis "Chapter 4": Geometry Day 27 (3/30): Golden Rectangles Day 28 (4/1): Symmetry Day 29 (4/4): Platonic Solids Day 30 (4/6): Review for Exam 2 Day 31 (4/8): Exam 2 Day 32 (4/11): Finish Platonics; flash of Fractals Day 33 (4/13): Fractals Day 34 (4/15): Fractals Day 35 (4/18): Mobius bands Day 36 (4/20): Links and Knots Day 37 (4/22): More Links and Knots Day 38 (4/25): More Links and Knots Day 39 (4/27): Distinguishing Links and Knots Day 40 (4/29): To infinity, and beyond! Day 41 (5/2): Logo Day! Day 42 (5/4): Logo Day, Part II! Day 43 (5/6): Summary

• Lessons for life:
  1. Keep an open mind.
  2. Just do it. Jump in. Make mistakes and fail, but never give up.
  3. Often when we've done it once, we do it again. Follow up one good deed with another!
  4. Understand simple things deeply.
  5. Break a difficult problem into easier ones.
  6. Look for patterns and similarities.
  7. Explore the consequences of new ideas. Generalize.
  8. Examine issues from several points of view.
     Don't be a turkey -- be a dog! (this one may require a little explanation....)
• Links:
  • Scanning a file from OneDrive to Canvas as a pdf.
  • L-System Fractals
  • Vi Hart
    • Vi Hart draws fractals
    • Vi Hart draws Fibonacci spirals
    • Vi Hart teaches us how to finger-dance in binary (here's the direct link to the video).
    • More fantastic math videos from Vi Hart
  • The Khan Academy discusses the Monty Hall Problem
  • Advanced Monty Hall
  • Generalization of Monty Hall
  • Keith Devlin pours cold water on a lot of the Fibonacci/Golden Ratio mania (while giving a great introduction to Fibonacci himself).
  • Patterns in Nature
  • A history of math timeline
  • A good reference on Mayan mathematics, and a short one Mayan Math
  • Plato discussing the Platonic solids (search for "cube" to find the discussion)
  • Nice website with examples of Cantor, Koch, and other fractals
  • Anna Ting just died.... Inhabiting Geometry
  • Fractal generation
  • Fractal quilts (and the fractal sums that took me to them!).
  • New Twist on Old Chemistry: Chemists have synthesized the first stable molecule twisted into the shape of the famous one-sided Mobius strip, proving a prediction made nearly 40 years ago.
  • Norsemathology wiki
  • Platonic Solids (and the Platonic solids in 2-D (paper template))
  • Tom Lehrer sings math music (here are the lyrics).
  • An on-line game, another form of Nim. There are four rows, of 6/5/4/3 pearls. One chooses any number of pearls from a single row, and the last one to take a pearl is the loser.
  • Sunflowers and Fibonacci: An interesting group participation project for the Manchester Science Festival: growing sunflowers!
  • Imhotep: Doctor, Architect, High Priest, Scribe and Vizier to King Djoser of Egypt
  • Leonardo da Vinci's Polyhedra
  • Paper Folding - Models of the Platonic Solids
  • Graph paper (double-sided)

Notes:

• Feel free to email me with your questions.
• The Departmental Syllabus for all Mathematics courses is a part of the syllabus for this course. Additional information concerning Secondary Education Students is available on the Departmental Syllabus.
• Taking tests in my classes
• Suggestions for the NKU Math/CS student
• Free tutoring for any NKU student is available from the the learning assistance center, BEP 230: call 5475 before problems arise!
• Women in Transition (WIT) supports non-traditional female students, juggling school, work, and family. Call the Women's Center at 572-6497 for more information.