Assignment 4: Geometry and Trigonometry

Resource: Peter Alfeld's Understanding Mathematics

Comments:

Many students find mathematics (and its cousin, arithmetic) intimidating. Perhaps because it is so linear and so "cut and dry" students sometimes feel that they cannot grasp mathematics no matter how hard they try.

An important component of our work in this course is to make mathematics more accessible to you and others in your world. One great way to do that is to learn to study math; that is, to learn study strategies, techniques, and concepts that help you get past the intimidation factor and learn what is going on "behind the curtain" in the study of math.

For this assignment, we are going to venture "behind the curtain" of math studies with the help of Peter Alfeld, a math scientist and researcher at the University of Utah. Dr. Alfeld's work involves not only studying the "x's and o's" of math, but studying the best ways to approach math as a study field. In other words, like us, he is concerned about the proper answer to particular problems; but, also like us, he is much more interested that students grasp the concepts deeply imbedded in the relationships, proportions, and functions they find in the world of math.

Assignment:

Site Review: Understanding Mathematics

For this assignment, please carefully review Peter Alfeld's helpful Web presentation called Understanding Mathematics. Read Dr. Alfeld's commentary, follow his links, and try your hand at solving his demo and sample problems.

Develop a review of Dr. Alfeld's site that also reports your experience with his methods.

Your report should include:

• An overview of the site, its purpose, layout, appeal, and message
• A detailed report of the site's contents and topics
• Your experience with the site's mathematical problems and challenges. In this section, be sure to report your experience with trying Dr. Alfeld's demo problems, tutorials, etc. Report on what you learned that you didn't know before (especially geometric and trigonometric functions). Be honest. If the pages do not help you better understand mathematical principles, feel free to say so. There will be no penalty for disagreeing with the assignment!
• The site's best features and its areas for improvement