2012 Summer – MAT 1180 – Reitz

Assignment (due Monday, July 2nd).  Imagine that you are invited to speak on the first day of MAT 1180, to give advice to entering students.  Write a paragraph responding to one of the following, describing what you would tell them.

1. What do you wish that you had been told at the start of this class, to help you succeed?
2. Choose one topic in the course that is especially challenging. Identify it, and give advice to students trying to master that topic.
3. What is the most important prior knowledge (not taught in the class) that you need in order to succeed?  Why is it important?
4. Would you recommend taking the class in the summertime?  Why or why not?

Extra Credit.  Respond to someone else’s comment.  Do you agree? disagree? Have anything to add?

You have no OpenLab assignment this weekend – use the time to catch up on other work and study for the exam.

Extra credit.  Tell me what music you like.  What’s in heavy rotation on your iPod?  I’m listening to Parov Stelar (“compulsively listenable electroswing”) and Aesop Rock (“inaccessible hiphop intelligentsia”).  A few ground rules:  No offensive lyrics, be considerate of others, feel free to include a link but only to a legal site such as YouTube or SoundCloud.

Most people go to college because they are trying to build a better future for themselves.  What job do you hope to get after college?  Imagine you have completed your college degree, and your education and experience have allowed you to obtain the job that you want.

With this job in mind, consider the following list of activities.  Which of them are you most likely to be asked to do as part of your new job?  Put them in order from most likely to least likely.  If you are uncertain, make your best guess based on your current knowledge and experience.

List of activities:

1. Solve a problem using algebra, including: analyzing the problem, drawing a diagram, writing an equation, and solving the equation.
2. Learn to use a computer system that is unfamiliar to you, and then complete a task on that system.
3. Brainstorm a variety of responses to a problem and decide among several solutions, each of which has plusses and minuses.
4. Use arithmetic (adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing).
5. Simplify a radical.
6. Complete an assignment with a team of several people, including: finding a time and place to meet, dividing responsibilities, making sure everyone is completing their part, delivering the final product on time.

Assignment (due midnight, Wednesday, June 20):

Respond to the above activity by leaving a comment in response to this post.  Your comment should include all of the following:

1. What is your major?  What job are you hoping to get after graduation?
2. From the list of activities above, give your ranking in order from “most likely to be required on your new job” to “least likely” (you can just list the numbers in order, you do not have to type the description, like this:  “My ranking is:  5, 2, 3, 4, 1, 6”).
3. Discuss the first item or two on your list.  Do you think that this class will help prepare you to complete that task?  If so, how?  If not, what could be done in this class to help prepare you for that task?
4. Discuss the last item or two on your list.  Do you think it is important to learn (even if you are not likely to use it at your job)?  Why or why not?

Extra Credit.  Comment on  someone else’s post.   Do you agree or disagree? Why?

This assignment is due Wednesday evening, April 6th (midnight).

Assignment.  Choose ONE of the following two topics.  Write a reply to this post, responding to the topic (1-2 paragraphs).  Begin by telling us which topic you chose.  Be sure to include your name in the post (so I can give you credit).

Topics.

1. Was math ever your favorite subject? If so, when was it? What about math made it your favorite? If math has never been your favorite subject, what about it do you not like?
2. Sometimes people can recognize a time when their opinion of math dramatically changed either for the better or the worse. If such a time happened for you or for a friend of yours, tell about it. If you did not experience such a thing, tell about your steady feelings about mathematics.

Extra Credit.  For extra credit, write a response to one of your classmates’ comments.  Do you feel the same?  Did you learn anything?  Do you have any advice?

Why are we doing this, anyway?  Having progressed this far in your school career, you are familiar with many of the tools for learning math:  studying, practicing by doing problems, asking questions when you need help, and so on.  I’d like to talk about two activities that may NOT seem related to learning math — but research shows that engaging in these activities can dramatically increase the amount that you learn, and change the way you learn it.  The first is writing — something not typically associated with mathematics.  When you express your ideas in words, it forces you to think them through very carefully, detail by detail.  A great way to check and see if you really understand something is to try to explain it to someone else, either out loud or in writing.  Example: if you know how to add fractions, try teaching it someone who doesn’t know how.  The second is called metacognition, or “thinking about thinking.”  This happens when you think about what was going on in your head while you were working on a problem or trying to learn a new idea.  What train of thought did you follow?  Where did you get stuck, and what did you do next?  What were you feeling at the time? and so on.  Combining writing and metacognition can be a tremendously powerful tool in identifying the ways we learn best and the ways we make mistakes, and learning to improve.  However, like any skill, it takes practice.  That’s why we’re getting started by writing a little about our past experiences with mathematics.