- Welcome back -- I hope that you had a good and restful Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
It's always weird to have a holiday so close to the beginning
of the semester, but it's certainly good to honor MLK!
I had the luxury of listening to a few of King's speeches. Wow.
Listening to him read his Letter
from a Birmingham Jail was very moving, in
particular.
- I hope that everyone received an email about a new account on our class
wiki, which is called Norsemathology. Follow the directions
and try to log in. Any issues, let me know.
Update: Shawn and I worked through this issue this morning:
- We discovered the email from norsemathology in a spam email account that
is accessible from webmail.nku.edu
- Go there, then click on "Access Quarantine". That's where we found his
email from norsemathology. They've sent you a randomly generated
password. If you need to, you can zoom with me, and we can walk through
this.
- We began the course with a reading, Paul Lockhart's A
Mathematician's Lament.
I've enjoyed reading your comments, and hearing a little of your
personal histories. Remember that your presentation at the end of the
course will be autobiographical, so you want to spend more time
thinking about how your interest in mathematics developed (who were
your influences, what almost side-tracked you, etc.).
We're fortunate to have people who have had experiences outside the US
(China, Iceland, Nepal), to provide some contrast to what most of us
have experienced.
- I have asked the following students to take charge of summarizing the
discussion on the wiki:
- Shawn Huesman
- Zhen Bao
- Chelsea Debord
- John Nuestro
- Ganga Adhikari
We'll be rotating through the class, so these are our lead-off
students; but that means they're off the hook in the next round, and
several others will be chosen.
If you all want to chat about this, remember that we have an office hour zoom at 9:00 on Wednesdays. That
goes for the rest of you, too, of course!
- For this week we've got a reading with a focus on economics, presented in
a somewhat unusual context.
Economics is an important consumer (as well as a producer) of
mathematics. My dad was a math prof, too, and I remember him telling me
(when I was an undergraduate at Bowling Green State University, where
he taught) that most of the really strong mathematicians in his classes
were econ majors. ("Hey Dad! What are you implying? I'm a math/physics
major!":)
- Get your comments in by Tuesday at Midnight, so that I can review the
discussion and choose some summarizers! (The earlier the better,
however, so that others can respond thoughtfully to your comments; it's
also good to go back later and see what others have said -- that's what
really turns it into a "discussion"!)