Concepts of Mathematics - Summer II 2012

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A bit of explanation, first! There is no required textbook to purchase for this course. Instead, I will be sharing with you my doctoral thesis project, which is a textbook for this course. I have been working on it (with Prof. John Mackey) for well over a year and a half, and am quite proud of the material we have to share. I started this project because I believe Concepts of Mathematics is an integral component of the CMU experience for mathematics, computer science, engineering, and general science students, and it would only make sense to have materials tailored for this unique course offering. Previously-used texts had their individual benefits and disadvantages, so we sought to incorporate the best parts of them, along with personal experiences with the course content and teaching and TA-ing it in the past, to create a text that is designed specifically for the teaching of this course.

Because this is an ongoing project, it is essential that we have your cooperation regarding the materials. Specifically, do not share any of these materials outside of this course! My doctoral degree is based on the success of this project, and I would hate to have that compromised by someone stealing parts of this book, or all of it. You will notice that the documents themselves are watermarked to prevent this, but you never know … I appreciate your help and respect in this matter, and I believe that the materials I have to offer and the time and effort I put into this course constitute sufficient payback for your understanding and cooperation :-)

Here's another benefit of this project: you can provide instant feedback on the text materials. Many thanks to my friend Adam Blank, computer science/teaching wunderkind, for developing a handy annotation application that we will use to accomplish this. Chapters of the text will be made available as needed, and you can log in to read the corresponding .pdf files and comment on them. Specifically, you will be able to mark those files with comments that are viewable by:

Yourself only — for making notes/reminders like "Study this later" or "Remember to ask about this in class" or something like that
You and me only — for pointing out potential errors I should look at, or to ask me questions, like "Can you explain this part in a different way?" or "Did we cover this in class?" and so on
The entire class — for pointing out errors that definitely need fixed, or to make suggestions, like "This part is useful for stuydying", or to ask a common question that you and your peers have talked about

(Note: these features have not been enabled fully yet. I will alert you when they are in place. For now, every annotation is, by default, viewable by everyone.)

We can then comment back and forth on your annotations and possibly update the document to reflect any suggested changes. This will also be a useful way for you to ask questions outside of class time and office hours.

As noted in the syllabus, you can potentially earn some extra credit by pointing out errors and offering suggestions, so please do so! (I'll keep a running count of how helpful your suggestions have been and possibly factor that into final grade decisions.)

The AnnotateMyPDF app is a work in progress by Adam, so please report any bugs/issues to him via email.
Feel free to ask me questions about it, too, if you are having problems.

Registration Instructions

Click on this link
Use your ANDREW ID as the username and make up a password you will remember
While you are logged in, come back here and click on this link to be added to the correct group
That's it!

In the future, you can use this link to log-in directly with your ID and password, so bookmark it.

Released Materials

The links provided are direct links to the individual chapters. They will only work if you have already registered for an account (see above).

Chapter 1 — Questions: What Is Mathematics?
A Mathematician's Lament — This is an essay written by mathematics educator Paul Lockhart about the state of education today and how mathematics is truly an art.
Part of this is required reading for HW 1.