MAT 336 History of Mathematics
Spring 2004
Index Course Description Syllabus Homework
Schedule of Presentations |
|
MAT 336 History of Mathematics
|
Index Course Description Syllabus Homework Schedule of Presentations |
|
Presentations 1 and 2 on Monday,
Presentations 3 and 4 on Friday.
Presentation topics must be relevant to the material covered that week. Presentation topic will be the topic of Term Paper 1. Make sure you discuss your presentation with the instructor at least one week in advance. |
Week 1 (Jan 26) Primitive counting; Positional and non-positional number systems. Mayan calendars. Babylonian number recording.
Week 2 (Feb 2) The decoding of Plimpton 322.
Signup for in-class presentation topics.
Week 3 (Feb 9) Egyptian number recording and Arithmetic.
Week 4 (Feb 16) Thales and Pythagoras; Euclid.
Week 5 (Feb 23) Euclid and Archimedes.
Presentation 1 Hoerthkorn - Pythagoras' triangular numbers
Presentation 2 Skall - Euclid on the infinite number of primes
Presentation 3 Mui - The Method of Exhaustion
Presentation 4 Koval - Mayan mathematics
Week 6 (Mar 1) Arab, Indian and Chinese mathematics during the "dark ages."
Presentation 1 Ting - The history of pi in ancient China
Presentation 2 St. Louis -
Presentation 3 Williams - Jia Xian and the extraction of square/cube roots
Presentation 4 Merritt - Influence and contribution of Al-Khwarizmi
Week 7 (Mar 8) Fibonacci; Cardano and Tartaglia.
Presentation 1 Gerardi - Tartaglia, Cardano and the cubic
Presentation 2 Choi - Fibonacci on Pythagorean triples
Presentation 3 Sarro - Cardano the gambler
Presentation 4 Albergo - Binet's formula for the n-th Fibonacci number
Week 8 (Mar 15) Galileo and Descartes.
Presentation 1 Demola - Galileo's geometric analysis of acceleration
Presentation 2 Black - Descartes' Rule of Signs
Presentation 3 McCullough - Descartes' use of geometry in performing operations and solving equations
Presentation 4 Sokal
Week 9 (Mar 22) Newton and Leibnitz.
Presentation 1 Rosenthal - Leibnitz' harmonic triangle and infinite sums
Presentation 2 Wu - Newton's Method of Fluxions
Presentation 3 Davis
Presentation 4 Kojima - The development of Differential Equations and the Brachistochrone problem
Week 10 (Mar 29) Probability: Pascal to Laplace.
Presentation 1 Carey
Presentation 2 Dellorusso - Pascal's triangle
Presentation 3 Smith - Laplace & probability
Presentation 4 Poulos -
Week 11 (Apr 12) Euler and the Bernoullis.
Presentation 1 Johnson
Presentation 2 Garvey -
Presentation 3 Patel -
Presentation 4 Fusco
Week 12 (Apr 19) Gauss, Bolyai and Lobachevsky
Presentation 1 Kurian -
Presentation 2 Parente - The fundamental theorem of algebra
Presentation 3
Presentation 4
Week 13 (Apr 26) Cantor and the infinite
Presentation 1 Khevelev
Presentation 2 Kim -
Presentation 3 Casado - Cantor's diagonal arguments
Presentation 4 Fiero - The Cantor Set
Week 14 (May 3) Review