Mathematics in Daily Life
Row 3. Junjie Xu, Renteng Huang, Xin Fan, Yinxiang Ma, Zhihao Hu,
Zeyu Xu, Weitao Zhu, Chao Hu.
Row 2. Mengyuan Li, Yao Ge, Jiahui Zong, Ziqian Liu, Zhixia Lin, Sheng Liu, Honggang Hu,
Yong Geng, Jun Zhang, Linfan Wang, Mengge Hu, Tianyu Chen
Row 1. Yajing Ge, Yun Ye, Xiaomei Gao, Chi-Kwong Li, Yinglei Hua, Peiyu Si, Wanting Shi,
Miaomiao
Wang, Siyuan
Nie.
Course Description
This course aims to help students develop the mathematical literacy to see the connections and
applications of mathematics to daily life activities. The course consists of two components:
June 16 (Monday) 1:00-2:00 p.m.
June 17 (Tuesday) 8:00-9:00 a.m.
June 18 (Wednesday) 8:00-9:00 a.m.
June 19/20 (Thursday/Friday) 1:00-2:00 p.m.
As participants, students will learn:
Course work and assessment [Some notess on the assessment scheme]
Class participation. 25 points
Evaluations/summary of presentations of other speakers. 25 points
Presentation. 25 points
Written report. 25 points.
1. Objective of the mini-course My understanding is that the goal of the mini courses is to provide a variety of topics for students at SHU to experience different educational models, and gain some international experience. It is a wonderful idea. In this connection, my course on ``Mathematics in Daily Life'' is to let students see that mathematics is not just about formulas and technical proofs. It is related to different topics and also daily life activities if one can make the connection. Also, I want to let the students see that one should not passively receive knowledge in the classroom at the university level. One should learn how to make connections of of their knowledge acquired from their instructors and textbooks to the outside world. Nowadays, it is easy to get a lot of information from different sources, one needs to select useful information, make suitable connections, and make good use of them in order to be successful in future study and work. This is would help ``break the four barriers'' emphasized as the spirit of the Shanghai University. It is also worth pointing out that even though my course does not emphasize technical mathematics, the discussion can easily lead to study at the research level. What I want to demonstrate is: one can make the connections according to his/her own interest and background that will lead to different levels of appreciating, using, and doing research in mathematics. 2. Students Most students saw the difference between my course and the mathematics courses in the past experience. Asking them to change their learning mode, and use English to communicate is challenging. This obviously move them away from their comfort zone. In any event, most students have a reasonable command of English. Many of them are just lacking practice and confidence. Hopefully, they would have more confidence and understand they can indeed communicate well in English if they have enough practice. I am happy that students were able to come up with a presentation and a report in a very short period of time. Of course, there are rooms of improvements, and it is not the hope that this short course can teach them all the techniequs in communicating mathematics orally and in writing. Nonetheless, it is the hope that students would learn from their experience and those of others so that they would be able to improve themselves continuously in communicating ideas (mathematics or other subjects). Thus, instead of a learning experience in one course, it will become a life long educational experience. In fact, in real life, one may indeed have to finish a task in a short notice of time, and give a presentation with time limits. So, in a sense the course provides some experience in real life setting. In addition, working with other team mates, and giving contructive comments to other classmates are also part of the training related to real life situations. Hopefully, students see that there are many other skills that will help their future study and work besides technical knowledge. 3. Possible improvements I also learn a great deal in this course. There are much could be improved under the current setting. a) Before meeting the students, I can put up more sample and proposed projects on my course website. Then students can choose tentative topics for their presentations even in day one, and form different groups according to their common interest. b) I could set up more meetings with students in the first 3 days so that students could get guidance for the preparation of their presentations. c) The idea of teaching buddies is a wonderful idea. But I think that it is important that the teaching buddy have time to work with the instructor. (Do not assign a busy professor as a teaching buddy.) Ideally, the teaching buddy can go to every class with the instructor, giving feedback and sharing experience with the instructor, helping the instructor with the university computer system. In fact, instead of treating the duty as a burden, hopefully, the teaching buddy can also gain some useful useful experience in the process. d) Hopefully, the Google search engine, and gmail are not blocked. It has huge negative impact on the teaching for some instructors such as myself who rely heavily on these websites.
Sample presentation and report format
Some suggested topics.