Alberto Corso

Teaching

This page has been designed as a means to support my History of Mathematics (MA 330) students. This page will be periodically updated and it will eventually contain, in addition to general information (see the syllabus), weekly announcements and homework assignments.

Obviously my webpage will only be helpful if I get feedback: What kind of stuff should be posted and in what form? Just as important: Got a topic or problem that should be discussed in class? Send it over!

Syllabus

Warning:
The material I discuss in class strives to expand as much as possible along the lines of what is explained in the short and condensed book by D.J. Struik. I am particularly interested in adding as much mathematical content as possible to each topic discussed. For these reasons, my class notes are a synthesis of several different sources...not just our textbook.
In case you are having trouble in taking notes or following the pace of the lectures, I am posting below a copy of my notes. They are in *.pdf format. These notes should serve you as a guideline of what I have covered in class. They are by no means containing all the details of what I explained in class. They are written for myself and they are at times rather sketchy. Needless to say, the notes are hard to follow if you have not been to class (especially when I add lots of mathematical content and/or proofs). So...please, don't skip class!
  • January 11, 2006 (questionnaire)
  • January 13, 2006 (lecture 1)
  • January 16, 2006 (Martin Luther King's Day)
  • January 18, 2006 (lecture 2)
  • January 20, 2006 (lecture 3)
  • January 23, 2006 (lecture 4)
  • January 25, 2006 (lecture 5)
  • January 27, 2006 (quiz #1)
    click here for a study guide for quiz #1
  • January 30, 2006 (lecture 6)
  • February 1 & 3, 2006 (lecture 7 & 8)
    in-class presentation on Hippocrates and the quadrature of lunes
    (For those of you who got interested and are curious about this topic:
    Additional reading --- The Five Squarable Lunes)
  • February 6, 2006 (lecture 9)
  • February 8, 2006 (lecture 10)
  • February 10, 2006 (lecture 11)
  • February, 13 2006 (quiz #2)
    click here for a study guide for quiz #2
  • February 15, 2006 (lecture 12)
  • February 17, 2006 (lecture 13)
  • February 20, 2006 (lecture 14)
  • February 22, 2006 (lecture 15)
  • February 24, 2006 (lecture 16)
  • February 27, 2006 (quiz #3)
    click here for a study guide for quiz #3
  • March 1, 2006 (lecture 17)
  • March 3, 2006 (lecture 18)
  • March 6, 2006 (lecture 19)
  • March 8, 2006 (lecture 20)
  • March 10, 2006 (lecture 21)
  • March 13-17, 2006 (Spring Break)
  • March 20, 2006 (lecture 22)
  • March 22 & 24, 2006 (lecture 23 & 24)
    in-class presentation on Archimedes' determination of circular areas
    (Austin Cornett, Erin Loos and Ben Schadler)
  • March 27 & 29, 2006 (lecture 25 & 26)
    in-class presentation on Heron's formula for triangular areas
    (Kayla Gifford, Crystal Holcomb and Christy Williams)
    nowadays proof using the law of cosines
  • March 31 & April 3, 2006 (lecture 27 & 28)
    in-class presentation on Cardano and the solution of the cubic
    (Bryan Dorsey, Kerry-Lyn Downie and Marcus Huber)
  • Note!!!
    On April 6, 2006 (Thursday), Professor Robin Hartshorne from the University of California at Berkeley will give a special colloquium talk (see poster) on the history of imaginary numbers.
    Location: Room 153 - Chemistry and Physics Building
    Time: 4:00-5:00pm (Pizza will be served at 5:00pm)
  • April 5 & 7, 2006 (lecture 29 & 30)
    in-class presentation on Isaac Newton approximation of pi
    (Sarah Riffe and Jennifer Watt)
  • April 10, 2006 (lecture 31)
    in-class presentation on Research Methods for Math 330
    (Tom Hecker, our Mathematics Librarian)
  • April 12 & 14, 2006 (lecture 32 & 33)
    in-class presentation on The Bernoullis and the harmonic series
    (Candice Cprek, Jamie Unseld and Stephanie Wendschlag)
  • April 17 & 19, 2006 (lecture 34 & 35)
    in-class presentation on The extraordinary sums of Euler
    (Aaron Boggs, Paul Jones and Jonathan Ross)
  • April 21 & 24, 2006 (lecture 36 & 37)
    in-class presentation on Euler's refutation of Fermat's conjecture
    (Kam Shing Chan, Hani Madback and Andrew Rast)
  • April 26 & 28, 2006 (lecture 38 & 39)
    in-class presentation on Euler and complex variables
    (Ashley Hank and Ben Hoh)

Interesting websites:
Special announcements:
  • On April 6, 2006 (Thursday), Professor Robin Hartshorne from the
    University of California at Berkeley will give a special colloquium talk (see poster):
    On the history of imaginary numbers.
    Abstract: At first, square roots of negative numbers were simply considered impossible. But when Raffaele Bombelli in the mid-16th century discovered that he could obtain real solutions of certain cubic equations by calculating with these impossible quantities, imaginary numbers started being used, and gave many important results even while remaining illogical. It was only at the beginning of the 19th century that the theory could be justified rigorously, thanks to the work of Wessel, Argand, Gauss, Cauchy and Hamilton.
    Location: Room 153 - Chemistry and Physics Building
    Time: 4:00-5:00pm (Pizza will be served at 5:00pm)

  • On April 10, 2006 (Monday), Mr. Tom Hecker (our Mathematics Librarian) will give an in-class presentation on Research Methods for MA 330.

In-class presentations:
During the course of the semester I will ask students to give group presentations (3 people per groups) on the topics listed below. I will provide the sources from which to organize the presentation (a key reference in this case will be the book by W. Dunham, Journey through Genius).