Math 160 Project Topic Ideas
(and remember you are welcome to
think of your own!)
1. Read a work of mathematical fiction, such as:
Uncle
Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture, by Apostolos Doxiadis
The
Parrot's Theorem, by Denis Guedj
The
Man Who Counted, by Malba Tahan
Arcadia
or Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard (plays)
2. Read a biography of a mathematician, such as:
A
Beautiful Mind, by Sylvia Nasar (Warning: the movie doesn't
follow it well!)
My
Brain is Open, by Bruce Schechter (about
Paul Erdős)
3. Read a children's mathematics book which presents basic mathematics
in a creative way and/or more advanced mathematics in an
accessible way, such as:
The
Adventures of Penrose the Mathematical Cat, by Theoni Pappas
The
Number Devil, by Hans Magnus Enzensberger
The beginning chapter(s) of Indra's Pearls by David Mumford, et
al.
4. Other mathematical topics that could be included in a course like
this one:
The Monty Hall problem
The Knights of the Round Table problem
The Jordan curve theorem
The four-color theorem
Pascal's triangle
Möbius strips
Penrose tiles
The birthday problem
Fermat's Last Theorem
Goldbach's Conjecture
Different base systems
Magic squares
Sets and Venn diagrams
5. Read all or part of one of the chapters we have skipped in the
textbook:
Chapter 2 - weighted voting systems
Chapter 4 - apportionment methods
Chapter 6 - the traveling salesman problem
Chapter 7 - networks
Chapter 8 - scheduling problems
Chapter 10 - modeling population growth
6. Learn about relationships between mathematics and other subject
areas, such as music, art, or history.
7. Learn about how some of the topics we are covering in class (or
other topics) are used in elementary school:
Tesselations and symmetry
Rubber-sheet geometry
Probability
Special kinds of numbers (e.g., perfect numbers)
Back to Math 160 home page
http://www.math.ksu.edu/projects160.html
Last modified:
19 October 2007