Course Materials
Textbook
The textbook for the course is Inquiry Based Enumerative Combinatorics by T. Kyle Petersen. The book is brand new and not yet in print. The good news is that the author and publisher are allowing us to use the book for free! The bad news is that the book will only be available in digital format and it cannot be posted publicly. A PDF of the book is available in BbLearn.
I will not be covering every detail of the book and the only way to achieve a sufficient understanding of the material is to be digesting the reading in a meaningful way. You should be seeking clarification about the content of the material whenever necessary by asking questions. Here’s one of my favorite quotes about reading mathematics.
Don’t just read it; fight it! Ask your own question, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? What happens in the classical special case? What about the degenerate cases? Where does the proof use the hypothesis?
Miscellaneous Materials
- Setting the Stage (PDF)
- Elements of Style for Proofs (PDF)
- The Secret to Raising Smart Kids | Carol Dweck (article on Scientific American)
- 7 Things Growth Mindset is Not (article on Turn Around for Children)
- Videos on Growth Mindset and Productive Failure
- Productive Failure/Struggle Skateboard Video 1 (1:25min)
- Productive Failure/Struggle Skateboard Video 2 (0:40 min)
- Productive Failure/Struggle BMX Video (1:39 min)
- Michael Jordan Failure Commercial (0:32 min)
- Mindsets: Fixed Versus Growth (2:19 min)
- Growth Mindset Animation (3:50 min)
- Grit: the power of passion and perseverance | Angela Lee Duckworth (6:12 min)
- KhanAcademy interview with Carol Dweck about growth mindset (3:06 min)
- Make Mistakes | Michael Starbird (2:11 min)
- Learning Like a Jungle Tiger | Trevor Ragan (5:23 min)
- Ira Glass on the Creative Process (1:54 min)
- The Chinese Farmer | Alan Watts (2:26 min)
- Do Schools Kill Creativity? | Ken Robinson (19:22 min)
- Lessons from My Math Degree That Have Nothing to Do with Math (6 min read on Medium)
- The Learner Lab Podcast
- Do Hard Things | The Learner Lab (2:41 min)
Exams
Below are links to the take-home portions of each exam. If you are interested in using LaTeX to type up your solutions, contact me and I will send you a link to the source file of the exam.
- Exam 1 (take-home portion) (PDF). (Due Tuesday, February 19)
- Exam 2 (take-home portion) (PDF). (Due Wednesday, April 10)