An Introduction to Proof via Inquiry-Based Learning

This free and open-source textbook was written by me (Dana C. Ernst) and is designed to be used with an inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach to an introduction to proof course. The source files are located on GitHub.

I will not be covering every detail of the notes 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 notes 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 questions, 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?

If you’ve found an error or have suggestions for improvements, please let me know.

Miscellaneous Materials

Exams

Below are links to the take-home exams. If you are interested in using LaTeX to type up your solutions (this is optional), contact me and I will send you a link to the source file of the exam.

  • Exam 2 (PDF). (Due Friday, March 13)
  • Exam 3 (PDF). (Submit via BbLearn. Due by midnight on Saturday, April 11)
  • Exam 4 (PDF). (Please email me a PDF of your work. Due extended to 5pm on Tuesday, April 28)
  • Final Exam (PDF). (Please email me a PDF of your work. Due by 9am on Friday, May 8)


Dana C. Ernst

Mathematics & Teaching

  Northern Arizona University
  Flagstaff, AZ
  Website
  928.523.6852
  Twitter
  Instagram
  Facebook
  Strava
  GitHub
  arXiv
  ResearchGate
  LinkedIn
  Mendeley
  Google Scholar
  Impact Story
  ORCID

Current Courses

  MAT 226: Discrete Math
  MAT 690: CGT

About This Site

  This website was created using GitHub Pages and Jekyll together with Twitter Bootstrap.

  Unless stated otherwise, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

  The views expressed on this site are my own and are not necessarily shared by my employer Northern Arizona University.

  The source code is on GitHub.

Land Acknowledgement

  Flagstaff and NAU sit at the base of the San Francisco Peaks, on homelands sacred to Native Americans throughout the region. The Peaks, which includes Humphreys Peak (12,633 feet), the highest point in Arizona, have religious significance to several Native American tribes. In particular, the Peaks form the Diné (Navajo) sacred mountain of the west, called Dook'o'oosłííd, which means "the summit that never melts". The Hopi name for the Peaks is Nuva'tukya'ovi, which translates to "place-of-snow-on-the-very-top". The land in the area surrounding Flagstaff is the ancestral homeland of the Hopi, Ndee/Nnēē (Western Apache), Yavapai, A:shiwi (Zuni Pueblo), and Diné (Navajo). We honor their past, present, and future generations, who have lived here for millennia and will forever call this place home.