An Introduction To Mathematical Reasoning Answer

Lecture notes: available here.

Instructor: John Palmieri, PDL C-538, 543-1785, office hours Mondays 1:30-2:30, Tuesdays 11:00-12:00, Fridays 11:30-12:30, and by appointment.

Text book: An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning by Peter J. Eccles. Professor Lee has collected a list of corrections for this book. I've added a few more corrections, also.

Goals: Study the basic language of mathematics and mathematical proofs: mathematical logic, sets, quantifiers, and functions; basic proof techniques, mathematical induction. You will need to know all of this material in many higher-level math courses: Math 327, 402/3/4, 424/5/6, 444/5, etc. To learn to write proofs, you need to read a lot of proofs and write a lot of proofs. So you need to do the reading assignments (see below), and you should do a lot of practice problems.

Class structure. The classes will be a mix of lecture and small group discussion. You must read the text book on your own: the lectures are intended to supplement the reading, not repeat it. You should also bring your book to class, especially on Mondays.

Homework. I will assign homework regularly. There will be two kinds of assignments: assignments to be done individually, and assignments done in groups. All of the written work will be due on Tuesdays at 3:30pm in my office (PDL C-538). In addition to the formally assigned work, I will "assign" a number of practice problems, most (or maybe all) of which have solutions in the back of the book. These are not to be turned in, but you should do as many as you need to learn the material.

Here is some advice on mathematical writing . Take this into consideration when preparing your homework.

Homework policies: for the individual portion of the homework, you may work with other people on your homework, but you must write your solutions yourself. For the individual and the group homework: if you find a solution in a book or some other source, please provide a reference. (But you will learn more if you don't rely too much on me, your classmates, or outside references. I strongly encourage you to try the problems on your own.)

For the group homework: keep in good communication with your group members. If your name is left off of your group's homework, I will assume that you didn't contribute, so you won't get any credit. So make sure you contribute, and make sure you get credit for your contributions.

Late homework will not be accepted. I will drop your lowest individual homework score at the end of the quarter. I won't drop any of the group homework scores -- they all count.

Reading reports: By 9:00pm each Sunday, you should post to the appropriate discussion: how much did you understand, where did you get lost, what questions do you have, what issues would you like clarified, etc. You can miss one week of these posts and still get full credit for this portion of the grade. Of course, you are welcome to post other questions and comments on the discussion board.

Portfolio: You will turn in revised versions of individual homework problems on June 4.

Final exam: The final exam is on Monday, June 10, 8:30-10:20 am.

Grading: The various components of the course are weighted as follows:

individual homework	25%
group homework	30%
reading reports	5%
portfolio	15%
final	25%

As noted above, I will drop your lowest individual homework score, and you may miss one week of reading posts and still receive full credit.

Historically, the median grade for Math 300 has been between 2.7 and 3.0. To compute course grades, I will choose a median grade for the class. Based on that median, and based on who I think deserves (say) grades of 4.0 or grades below 2.0, I will find a formula to compute the rest of the grades. As far as the median goes: I've taught this course a number of times, so I have certain expectations about your performance and abilities. If this seems to be a typical group of Math 300 students, then the median will be between 2.7 and 3.0. If many of the students in the course exceed my expectations, I will happily choose a higher median; conversely, if many people seem to underperform, I will (unhappily) choose a lower median. In any case, there is no predictable correlation between percentage totals for the quarter and course grades.