Math 302 Activities for Dropping Homework Grades, Spring 2002

You can earn the right to drop your lowest one or two homework grades.  To drop each grade, you need to do one of the following activities, and a one page report.  (Note that it doesn't matter when you do the activity:  your lowest homework grade(s) from the whole semester will be dropped.)

For the purpose of record-keeping, send your report by email to your instructor after you have completed any of the activities.  The deadline for completing any of these activities is one week before the last day of classes.

Please note that only in unusal circumstances can you drop more than two homework grades in this way.

1. Attend any two geometry, topology, or combinatorics talks in the Mathematics or Computer Science department.   One or both of the talks must be of an introductory nature, but the second talk may be a continuation of the first.   For example, you might find the following seminars interesting.
   • Geometric Potpourri Seminar - most Tuesdays at 2pm in 241 Altgeld Hall.
   • Mathematics in Science and Society , some Tuesdays at 4pm in 245 Altgeld Hall or 314 Altgeld Hall.
   • Theoretic Computer Science and Combinatorics TBA
   • Computational Topology Seminar, Wed 10 am room TBA
   • Computational Geometry Seminar TBA
   Before attending send a note to your instructor.  File your report soon afterwards, before you forget.   Note that you should not expect to understand everything in the talk you go to (nobody does) but you should at least try to understand the main idea of the talk.  The math department posts a weekly schedule of talks.  Look for those whose abstracts clearly state that they are of an introductory nature.

2. Write a computer program on a geometrical subject which might be suitable for children and the general public. 
3. Create an animated graphic illustrating an geometrical subject suitable for your webpage. 
4. Crochet or knit a hyperbolic plane.  Instructions can be found in your textbook.  If you choose this option, you will be asked to bring in your hyperbolic plane to class from time to time.  However, you should find that having your own model makes it much easier to answer some of the problems we will ask in this course.  If you plan to do this, it will be most useful to do it near the beginning of the semester.  (There are probably other construction methods that, unlike paper, will result in sturdy and permanent models; if you have another idea for constructing a sturdy model, please talk to us about it.)
5. Write a short story about life in hyperbolic space.  This should be about five pages in length.  For inspiration, you may want to look at  the books Flatland: A Romance of many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott and Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension  by Rudolf Rucker.
6. Work through a Chapter from the book that we will not cover in class.  This includes all of chapters 12-14 and 17-22.  It also includes sections 11.2-7, 15.4 and 16.5-6.
7. Work through a Chapter from the Shape of Space by Jeff Weeks.
8. Think of something particularly geometrical to do that interests you! Write your instructor a proposal describing what you have in mind. For instance, you could construct a model or draw a picture with a distinctly geometric content, with explanation.