Math 111: Math for Education Students

McGill, Winter Term 2003-04

Instructor: David Savitt
Office: Burnside 1129
E-mail: dsavitt at math dot mcgill dot ca
Phone: 398-3851
Office hours: Mondays 3:00-4:00 pm, Tuesdays 4-5 pm

Here are the syllabus and survey in PDF format.

Textbook: Billstein, Libeskind, and Lott, A Problem Solving Approach to Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers

Midterms: There will be two in-class midterms, on Thursday, February 12 and Tuesday, March 16.

Grades: Grades will be computed as follows:

• Homework: 24%
• Midterm 1: 20%
• Midterm 2: 20%
• Final exam: 30%
• Participation: 6%

Homework: There will be 12 weekly written assignments, in addition to reading from the textbook.

• Homework 1, due Tuesday, January 13; read B-L-L, Chapter 1. (Note: for problem #5, you will need to read about Gauss's trick in section 1-2 of the textbook.) Here are Solutions and Comments for Homework 1.

• Homework 2, due Tuesday, January 20: this includes problems 18-20 from Chapter 1, Form A, and Dr. Wonderful's birthday trick (also to be handed out on Thursday); finish reading B-L-L, Chapter 1, and read the first two sections of Chapter 2. Here are Solutions to Homework 2.

• Homework 3, due Thursday, January 29: problems 1-9 from Chapter 2, Form A. Finish reading B-L-L, Chapter 2. Here are Solutions and Comments for Homework 3.

• Homework 4, due Thursday, February 5: problems 10-19 from Chapter 2, Form A, and problems 2 and 8 from "Solving Problems with Venn Diagrams". Finish reading B-L-L, Chapter 2, if you have not done so already. Here are Solutions and Comments for Homework 4.

• Solutions to Midterm 1.

• Homework 5, due Tuesday, February 10. Also read B-L-L, Section 3-1. Here are Solutions and Comments for Homework 5.

• Homework 6, due Tuesday, March 2. (Apparently some older versions of Adobde Reader are not displaying this file correctly. There should be a line at the top, which says: Do problems #2, #3, #4(a),(b), #5, #7, #8, #9, #12 from Chapter 3, Form A. My apologies to those of you who did more problems than required.) Skim the remainder of B-L-L, Chapter 3. Here are Solutions and Comments for Homework 6.

• Homework 7, due Tuesday, March 9. Read sections 4.1 and 4.2. Here are Solutions and Comments for Homework 7.

• Homework 8, due Tuesday, March 16. Read sections 4.3 and 4.4 by Thursday, March 18. Here are Solutions and Comments for Homework 8.

• Homework 9, due Tuesday, March 23. Read sections 5.1 and 5.2. Here are Solutions and comments for Homework 9.

• Solutions to Midterm 2.

• Homework 10, due Tuesday, March 30. Skip 3(b), 9, and 10; do the rest. Finish reading chapter 5. Here are Solutions for Homework 10.

• Homework 11, due Tuesday, April 6. Do problems 1 through 9. Read sections 7.1 through 7.4. Here are Solutions for Homework 11.

• Homework 12, due Tuesday, April 13. Do problems 1 through 9. Some problems may have more than one correct answer; you only need to provide one answer. Here are Solutions for Homework 12. Read sections 8.1 through 8.3.

• Solutions to the final exam.

Interesting links

• Section 1-4 (Logic): Try this psychological experiment, and be sure to to read not just the explanations at the end, but also the section headed "Analysis".

• Chapter 3: Powers of 10. This site is worth taking a look at, to get a feel for the how big the powers of 10 are.