Timeline for Teaching undergraduate students to write proofs

Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5

4 events

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Jan 16, 2011 at 21:40	comment	added	Alexander Woo		I know of exactly one subject in the liberal arts where the 'methods' course - an introduction to the epistemology and methodology of the discipline - is frequently taught to first year students. This is Religion, a subject where many students come in with a large number of 'facts' and an immediate deconstruction of them is healthy. Imagine telling a historian or philologist that historiography or literary theory ought to be taught to first years. They would tell you you were barking mad; almost all the students would be scared away from the major. How is mathematics different?
Jan 14, 2011 at 14:16	comment	added	Thierry Zell		I had a similar experience. I did not care much for math in high-school, but my parents both have degrees in math and promised me it gets more interesting, which is the only reason why I tried it after high-school. Fortunately, I ended up starting with abstract linear algebra (did not even see a single matrix until at least 6 weeks into the course). The irony of course is that my students barely get to see the things that got me excited about math towards the end of their training, if at all.
Jan 14, 2011 at 11:12	comment	added	Pete L. Clark		"So how can people want to go into mathematics when they haven't seen as many of the real reasons that people pursue it." Good question. I have often wondered such things. What does it feel like to be a math major who spends half his time studying how to solve problems in calculus and linear algebra and differential equations, and in the senior year learns a little group theory to the point of, say, Lagrange's theorem on subgroups? What idea do they have of mathematics when they graduate? Are they satisfied with what they learned? Should they be? These questions haunt me sometimes.
Jan 14, 2011 at 6:54	history	answered	Eric Naslund	CC BY-SA 2.5