(one unit to be taken during the first three years)

Learning Objectives

Students in Mathematical Approaches courses develop an appreciation of the power of Mathematics and formal methods to provide a way of understanding a problem unambiguously, describing its relation to other problems, and specifying clearly an approach to its solution. Students in Mathematical Approaches courses develop a variety of mathematical skills, an understanding of formal reasoning, and a facility with applications.

Guidelines

  1. These goals are met by courses that treat formal reasoning in one of the following areas.
    1. Quantitative reasoning: The ability to work with numeric data, to reason from those data, and to understand what can and can not be inferred from those data.
    2. Logical reasoning: The study of formal logic, at least to the extent that is required to understand mathematical proof.
    3. The algorithmic method: The ability to analyze a problem, to design a systematic way of addressing that problem (an algorithm), and to implement that algorithm in a computer programming language.
  2. Where these skills or methods are taught within the context of a discipline other than mathematics or computer science, they must receive greater attention than the disciplinary material.

Approved Courses

  • CSCI 161 Introduction to Computer Science
  • CSCI 261 Computer Science II
  • HON 213 Mathematics of Symmetry
  • MATH 103 Introduction to Contemporary Mathematics
  • MATH 150 Finite Mathematics
  • MATH 160 Introduction to Applied Statistics
  • MATH 170 Calculus for Business, Behavioral and Social Sciences
  • MATH 180 Calculus and Analytic Geometry I
  • MATH 181 Calculus and Analytic Geometry II
  • MATH 260 Intermediate Applied Statistics
  • MATH 280 Multivariate Calculus
  • PHIL 240 Formal Logic