Teacher: Carl Eberhart, 759 POT, 257-1258, carl@ms.uky.edu

Office Hours:  12:30-2:00  MTW, or by appointment. You can also consult by email.

Textbook: A History of Mathematics, by Carl Boyer, revised by Uta Merzbach .  John Wiley and Sons.  Available from Amazon.com for $28.

Brief Syllabus:   Mathematics has a long history, at least 4000 years.   We will start with fractions as written by the Egyptian scribe Ahmes around 1650 BC and end  somewhere in the 19th century with say Poincare's classification of surfaces.  Our goals:  To learn the order in which mathematics, particularly algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus, developed over the centuries.   To learn what the problems were that fostered the development of mathematics, and to resolve as many as time permits.  To learn about the principal figures involved with the development of mathematics.

Homework and Class Participation:  Reading and working problems at home will be necessary for you to be successful. I will assign homework, which we will discuss in class.

Projects: There will be three projects/papers due during the semester.   Two will  be group projects.   Up to three people in a group will be assigned the task of expanding on an article or two from the text,  completing partial solutions given in the article,  finding and correcting any errors in the article, and presenting the results in a  Maple worksheet.  Selected worksheets will be presented to the class by the authoring group.  The last will be an individual project, also presented in a Maple worksheet,  to be on a topic selected  by the individual and approved by me.

Exams: There will be a midterm exam on  March 2, and a final exam at 8 am on May 4.

Grades: Your grade will be determined on the basis of homework and class  participation 20 %, group projects 10 % each, individual project 20 %,  midterm 20 %, and final 20 %. Grades will be assigned as follows: 90 or above A, 80 or above B, 70 or above C, 60 or above D, and E for anything else.

Calendar of class days:  Jan  14,  19,  21,  26, 28;   Feb.  2, 4, 9, 11, 16, 18,  23, 25;  March 2, 4, 9, 11, 23, 25, 30;  April 1, 6, 8, 13, 15, 20, 22, 27, 29.