Math 6342: Point-Set Topology, Fall 2008

Exams and Homework

Miscellaneous Resources

• It will be important for you to read your textbook in this course. If you are unfamiliar with reading mathematics textbooks, here is a collection of Tips for Reading Your Mathematics Textbook that I have written.
  
  
  
• Here are some links to sites about point-set topology.
  • The Wikipedia article on Point-Set Topology
  • The Wikipedia article on Topological Spaces
  • The MathWorld article on Point-Set Topology
  • What is Topology?
  
  
  
• 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 many areas of mathematics we see that it took a long time for many of its ideas to be rigorized. Like many areas of human understanding, the development of mathematics 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 thousands of years.
  
  MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive.
  
  In particular, you can read about the
  History of Topology.
  
  
• For something different, check out this Nova site about one of the greatest achievements of mathematics in the 20th century:
  
  The proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
  
  
• Also check out some unsolved problems in mathematics
  
  • Famous Unsolved Problems in Mathematics
  • A List of Mathematical Conjectures
  • The Millennium Prize Problems, each of which carries an award of $1,000,000 to anyone who can solve the problem.
  
  and the various awards that are given to people working towards the solutions of these, and many other, problems in mathematics:
  
  • The Fields Medal, often called the Nobel Prize of mathematics
  • The Abel Prize, established in 2001.
  
  
  
• And for something a little lighter, check out Mathematrix, and in particular, Math Comics.