- Welcome, masked students!
- This session will be captured on Zoom, if
I remember to turn it on, and record it. Please help me to remember.
Here's the link to the Zoom recording of today's session.
Yikes! Gotta figure out the right window and camera angle to capture what's going on in class. So I'll be working on that.
Here's the play-by-play (which includes a video version of the "transcript").
- It's particularly important that I do this, because I have an
asynchronous section of MAT115, and they're going to be
following along with us.
The good news for you is that I will do a summary of our in-class session, and post it here as well. So I'll try to distill out some of the key ideas, and maybe provide further examples, etc.
- 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.
- Wherever you are, be all there. Jim Elliot
- Most days there will be a "Question of the day": today's is
What do global warming and Covid have in common? - 3x5 cards: Please fill out the card, indicating
- Name
- Hometown
- What is your calling? ("a calling has to do with one's larger purpose, personhood, deepest values, and the gift one wishes to give the world.... A calling is about the use one makes of a career." David Orr, Earth in Mind)
- What is your dream job?
- What is something special about you?
- I am hearing-impaired (wear hearing aids): teaching has become
even trickier, given the masking. But if I don't understand
your question, please be patient with me; or, if I
misunderstand what you've said, just let me know that I'm off
track!
- This just in from the Dean of Arts and Sciences: "Beginning [Tuesday, 1/18] and continuing for the next few weeks, Gravity Diagnostics will once again be providing COVID testing on campus. Testing is located in the University Center, Room 204 and is available Monday through Thursday from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m."
- The syllabus.
- Class will be organized around discussions of material, and activities. I hope that you will contribute! Chime in!
- 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 for them to "infect" the rest of the students.
- This to not going to be a "practical math" course: you
will not learn how to balance a checkbook.
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 text (relatively cheap) will be supplemented with on-line materials.
- The schedule and assignments.
- Because of scenes like this:
I ask that you keep the phones out of sight. It's really distracting for me to see someone playing on their phone during class. And if I get too distracted, I absent-mindedly begin adding lots more homework problems....:)
- What is this "Logo"? Here are a couple that former students have done:
- Our goal is more than just mathematics -- there are "Lessons for life"
that we should focus on:
- Keep an open mind.
- Just do it. Jump in. Make mistakes and fail, but never give up.
- Often when we've done it once, we do it again. Follow up one good deed with another!
- Understand simple things deeply.
- Break a difficult problem into easier ones.
- Look for patterns and similarities.
- Explore the consequences of new ideas. Generalize.
- Examine issues from several points of view.
Don't be a turkey -- be a dog! (this one may require a little explanation....)
(We're starting BIG!) To answer that, I've invited my good friend Tetrahedron in to help.