Mathematics and Design

Quote of the day

Verse LI.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

The Rubiyat of Omar Khayam

Course information

Text: Mathematics for the Million
Author: Lancelot Hogben
ISBN: 0-393-31071-X

Online graded homeworks will be administered on web pages that use MathML. To browse such pages, it will be necessary to use the Mozilla web browser (version 1.1 or later)
see Mozilla installation page

Look up your grades

Ask Thea

Note: Exam pages and other web pages for this course will not necessarily even show up in other browsers! Once you have installed Mozilla and the fonts, you can check your installation by viewing:

The MathML Start Page

Use this to check whether MathML is working properly on your web browser.

Third online graded homework, repeat. Due 6/04/2003

Third exam. Due 5/29/2003

Grading curves

Chapter 1 of the text:
- The origin of geometry in Old Kingdom Egypt
  Egyptian Mathematics Page
- Babylonian mathematics: positional notation and base-60 numbers
Chapter 2, 3:
- Thales brings geometry from Egypt
  Thales Home Page
- Ancient Greece: mathematics as drawing.
- The Pythagoreans: Numbers as Religion. The Golden Ratio
  Pythagoras Home Page
  Animated proof of Pathagoras's Theorem
- Discovery of irrational numbers by Hippasus
  The Pythagoreans regarded this as heresy and murdered him for it.
- Euclid and Plato
  Euclid Home Page
  Euclid's Greatest Common Divisor Page
- Proof by Induction
Chapter 5: Alexandria and Arabic Mathematics
- Indefinite numbers
- Al Khwarismi (780-850 AD) and the School of Baghdad
  Al Gebr We'l Mukabala (i.e., algebra)
  Al Khwarismi Home Page
- Omar Khayyam Home Page
  The Rubiat of Omar Khayyam
- Symmetries in Islamic Art
- Karen's Tesselation Page
- History of Aperiodic tilings
- Penrose Tilings
Chinese Mathematics Page
Chapter 6: The dawn of nothing.
Zero as a number (Indian mathematics).
Ancient Indian Mathematics
Binary arithmetic page
Skip chapter 7
Chapter 8: The geometry of motion
European mathematics. Everything goes (as long as it works)
- Descartes Home Page
- Imaginary numbers
  Fundamental theorem of algebra home page
- Time line of imaginary numbers
- Complex numbers Home Page
Chapter 9: Logarithms and the search for series

The invention of the slide rule
A simulated slide rule

Chapter 10: Newton and Leibniz. The invention of calculus
Issac Newton Home Page
Leibniz Home Page

For students unable to install or use Mozilla

Students who are unable to install Mozilla can get a Math department account by accessing the
Account Creation Page
This gives you access to the Math Departmental computers in room 223 of the Korman Center. These machines are running Windows and have Mozilla installed (with all the necessary fonts).

Links

Justin R. Smith