PROBABILITY IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM

MATH 497 SYLLABUS AUTUMN, 2004

Instructor: Ginger Warfield (aka Dr. Virginia M. Warfield)

Office: Padelford C-437

Phone: 543-7445 (office)

329-0376 (home—call anytime between 9 AM and 10 PM)

e-mail address: warfield@math.washington.edu

Office Hours: Mondays , 2:15 - 3:15 and Thursdays 3:15 – 4:15. If neither of those is a good time, e-mail me and we will set up another time.

Text: The Probability chapter of "Mathematics Beyond the Numbers." Will be available from Professional Copy at 4200 University Way in a few days.

Course Format: Very little lecturing. Lots of work in groups—either the largish group consisting of the whole class, or several smallish groups. This produces a kind of learning very little of which can be gleaned from somebody else's notes. It follows that short of double pneumonia or a personal crisis of pretty spectacular dimensions, you should NOT miss class.

There will be homework every week. If you can get together with others to work on it, that's great. If getting together is not possible, phone conferring can be helpful.

There will be something resembling a midterm in week 4 or 5. It will involve some blend of group and individual work. The general idea is to motivate some reviewing and tying together of material without producing an inordinate amount of stress on anyone's nervous system.

There will probably be one Project and some sort of take-home final. If inspiration strikes, this could turn into two Projects instead (and you should feel free to help provide said inpiration!)

Your other major piece of work comes in many small installments — nine, to be precise. In lieu of a journal, I am going to have you do e-mail Follow-up Reports:

A Follow-up Report is a description/discussion of some one, particular moment in class when something really grabbed you. It can be a moment when something that had been confusing you suddenly cleared up, or a patch of class that left you with some lively questions, or a time when you suddenly made a connection with the mathematics from another class or context. Whichever it is, you should describe what was going on at that moment—which problem you had been working on, what had been said about it by others, and what made things clear for you (or suddenly obscure, or...) The report need not be long (1/2 to 1 page is fine.)

Send the Follow-up Report by e-mail to warfield@math.washington.edu. The subject line must read 497 FUR x/y/04 (the date of the class in question, not the date mailed). I must receive it by Tuesday of the following week at the latest. Note -- an observation of a pattern: The Follow-up Reports are part of your credit. I very much enjoy reading them, and I use them to help me shape the course. I also generally respond to them. What I don't do is keep tabs on whobody has sent how many reports. This means that I don't remind people who aren't doing them, and it comes as a nasty shock to both of us when at the end of the quarter I have to deduct a blob of credit (see below.)

Grades: They strike me as a bit extraneous, but we're stuck with them. I operate on the following scheme: The basic grade for the course is a 3.0 . That means that if you attend class regularly, participate reasonably, turn in all the homework including the FURs and do a workmanlike job on the midterm, the project and the final your grade will be a 3.0. On the other hand, in any of these categories, if you do something beyond the basic and workmanlike you will chalk up something between a smidgeon and a blob of additional credit. With a sufficient accumulation of smidgeons and blobs, you can boost yourself up to a 4.0 . And likewise, things that are below par will drop your credit by smidgeons or even blobs. Note in this context that for all my ferocious words above, I am aware that it can upon occasion be simply impossible to get to class. If this happens, please get in touch with me, and we will figure out what to do about it—how to fill you in on what you have missed, etc. Note also that 3.0 is simply a baseline—not a proposed median. I would dearly love to have you all accumulating so much credit that I had to give only 4.0's!

Comment: I am thinking of this more as a seminar than a course, in the sense of leaving it flexible enough to respond to whatever may arise. I may well make some changes as we go along—and I am definitely open to suggestions and requests from you.

ASSIGNMENT # 1

Read Section 1 of the Mathematics Beyond the Numbers chapter. Then look at all of the problems at the end of the chapter. If your probability is rusty (or you haven't done it before) make yourself write out solutions for a lot of the problems (especially the odd ones, whose solutions are in the back of the section.) Get as far through the set as you can, but not at the cost of glossing over problems you "kind of" understand. I would rather you put your back into half of them than skimmed though them all.

Turn in five problems -- the most interesting five that you feel fairly confident about. Write full solutions with careful explanations — an answer consisting of a single number will do nothing whatever for me!

Check the website http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/index.html I have in mind using it as a resource – specifically having you check through the Chance News section for interesting and thought-provoking ideas. You might look through some other sections, though, and see if something strikes you as a real possibility for this quarter.

Be prepared to discuss in class at least one of your findings from the web site.

Turn in by e-mail by Tuesday A quasi-autobiography about a page or so long, telling me whatever you would like to about yourself. If I were doing the writing, you would probably hear about my three grown kids, my medieval music and my obstreporous but beloved small dog as well as a few of the twists and quirks of my mathematical career.

Don't forget the Follow-up Report