Basic Info |
Instructor: | Dr. Mark Tomforde |
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Office: | 133 Jones Hall | |
Phone: | 221-2013 | |
Office Hours: | MWF 10AM -- 11AM Th 1:30PM -- 3PM (or by appointment) |
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Syllabus: | Download the Syllabus | |
Lecture: | MWF 11:00 -- 11:50AM in Jones 302 | |
Lab: | (Sec. 01) Tu 8:30 -- 9:20AM in Jones 203 (Sec. 02) Tu 9:30 -- 10:20AM in Jones 203 |
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Announcements: | The Final Exam is in Millington
150. Practice Final 1 and solutions. Practice Final 2 and solutions |
- For many of you this is your first college mathematics course. Some students find that math courses in college are substantially different from their high school math courses. There is less time spent in class and students must take greater responsibility for their own learning. The following handout describes the expectations of college math courses and talks about what you can do to meet these expectations:
Mathematics Courses in College
- The history of mathematics is an important subject. It gives a context in which to view the results that one learns in math classes. Furthermore it shows that mathematics is, first and foremost, a human activity. By looking at the historical development of Calculus we see that it took a long time for many of its ideas to be rigorized. Like all mathematics, the creation of Calculus was not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but rather a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often got lost and many wrong turns were taken. If you find yourself struggling to understand the concepts introduced in this course, then you are in good company. Many of the greatest minds in mathematics struggled with these same concepts over a period of hundreds of years.
More on the History of Calculus
- The Wikipedia entry on Calculus.
- A page reviewing the concept of slope from Calculus I.
- If you are tired of Calculus, check out this Nova site about one of the greatest achievements of mathematics in the 20th century:
The proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
- And for something a little lighter, check out Mathematrix, and in particular, Math Comics.