MATH/DATA 195M: Major Colloquium Course

MATH/DATA 195M is a one-unit colloquium course for new freshman and transfer majors in Mathematics or Statistics & Data Science. 

Course Objectives

  • Introduce new majors to the mathematical and statistical communities at the UA.
  • Support new majors as they adjust to university life and expectations.
  • Improve students' written and oral communication skills, especially on technical topics.

To achieve these goals, students will complete a number of activities, including journaling; writing and formatting a resume, research paper, and presentation in LaTeX; and accessing university resources.

Course Information

Math/Data 195M Course Schedule & Syllabus

  • Spring 2024 Course Schedule
  • Spring 2024 Course Syllabus
  • Presentations

Archived Course Schedules:

Fall 2023.pdf
Fall 2022.pdf
Spring 2022.pdf
Fall 2021.pdf
Spring 2021.pdf
Spring 2020.pdf

Events Outside of Class

Students must attend at least one event during the semester that gives them exposure to the UA math and statistics community, opportunities for engagement or careers in math and stats, or resources for success during their time at the university. They will write a paragraph about the experience.

Pre-approved events include:

Other events may be approved if the student emails the instructor at least three business days prior to the event. 

Assignment Details:

  • You must attend one of the above events for at least one hour. 
  • Write a paragraph of at least six sentences that includes:
    • The name, location, date, and time of the event.
    • 2-3 details about the event that interested you (e.g. specific employers you talked to, activities you participated in, facts from a lecture, or new study strategies, depending on the type of event).
    • One new thing you learned from the event.
    • Whether you will use what you learned here in future, and why or why not? (For example, will you continue to attend club meetings or lectures, will you follow up with any employers, will you use a specific study skill?)
  • The paragraph is due at the last class session, but you may hand it in at any time throughout the semester. You are encouraged to complete the paragraph during the same week as the event you attended.

LaTeX Resources

Overleaf.com is an online LaTeX editor. Students are required to use Overleaf for completion of course assignments. Overleaf also includes a number of introductory articles and guides for getting started in LaTeX. 

In particular, you can find an introduction to Beamer here. I also recommend the articles on Biblatex, Inserting Images, and TikZ.

Use Biblatex to format your bibliography. You can find a handy biblatex cheat sheet here. 

More Resources:

Research Paper

For this assignment, you will write a paper of about 1000 words and give a 6-8-minute presentation on a mathematical topic, which may be a well-known person, theorem, problem, or application of mathematics, statistics, or data science. Your paper should be typeset using LaTeX, and your presentation created using Beamer. 

There are three goals to this assignment:

  1. Practice specific LaTeX commands and increase comfort typing papers and presentations in LaTeX.

  2. Convey technical concepts simply and clearly to an audience of peers in both written and oral formats.

  3. Learn more about a mathematical topic that interests and excites you!

 

Students will be expected to follow formatting conventions from the American Mathematical Society Style Guide.

Helpful sources for research:

Helpful sources for writing support:

 

For ideas for paper topics (or future research topics, or just to learn about the fun things happening in math and science), I recommend these online publications:

University Resources

Your first stop! Any question, any time, by text, online chat, or in person: https://sos.arizona.edu/ 

Your second first stop! Ask your advisor. If we can't answer your question, we can tell you who else to contact. Email mathcenter@math.arizona.edu, or find your advisors for other declared majors/minors/interest groups in your UAccess Student Center on the right side bar. If you are interested in another major or minor but haven't declared yet, search on advising.arizona.edu.

 

Academic Resources

 

Other Essential Offices

 

Extracurricular Opportunities

 

Employment and Careers

 

 
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