MATH 103, Mathematical Explorations

Summer 2004, 3-week session: Geometry and the Visual World

Catalogue Description

This course is for students who wish to experience how mathematical ideas evolve. In homework assignments students actively investigate mathematical ideas. The course emphasizes ideas and imagination as opposed to techniques and calculations. Topics vary depending on the instructors. Some assessment is done through writing assignments.

Course Description

This course explores the development of geometric models that help us address the question, “Why do things appear the way they do?” The question is as intriguing today to artists and psychologists as it was over two thousand years ago for Euclid. The mathematical tools we will develop and use to investigate this question build on the familiar tools from high school geometry. Our geometrical exploration will take us from ancient Greece through the Renaissance, to the “Magic Eye” stereograms in the Sunday comic strips.

Instructor

Maria Terrell

Texts

No Required text. Our work will draw on handout, and notes from Euclid’s Optics, Alberti’s On Painting, E.C. Zeeman’s Geometry and Perspective, and selected library reserves.

Class Meeting Times & Room

M-F 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM and 2:30 PM - 3:45 PM, 207 Malott Hall

Office Hours

10 AM -11 AM every day, 225 Malott Hall

Assignments and Grades

Much of what you learn in this course will be the result of reading, reflecting on the questions that accompany the reading, discussing the meaning of the questions and your interpretation and solution with your classmates. Your grade in MATH 103 will be based on:

20% attendance and participation in class discussions
60% daily written HW assignments and their revisions
20% Final paper and presentation