Tag: teaching
The parity of zero, the primality of two, and other mysteries
From time to time, I try to speak or write about mathematics for general (non-mathematical) audiences. If you've done this, you know it's pretty hard -- in large part because it's hard to know what people know, despite my best attempts t…
A "minimal" proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra
When I was in graduate school, I came up with what I think is a nice proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra. At the time, I wrote it up here somewhat formally; I thought it might make a nice blog post, since the formal write-up obsc…
Integral House
I'm teaching Calculus III at Columbia this semester, and am kind of amazed at the exploitative prices charged for Stewart's Calculus, 8th Edition, "Early Transcendentals" . (Not that anyone knows what "Early Transcendentals" are). On the…