Semester:
Offered:
Lauren Williams (Department of Mathematics)
First-Year Seminar 52P 4 credits (fall term) Enrollment: Limited to 12
Prerequisite: While some exposure to proofs may be helpful, this seminar aims to be accessible to students without a sophisticated math background.
The Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos used to talk about “The Book,” in which God keeps the most beautiful proofs for mathematical theorems. Erdos’ highest praise, upon learning from someone a new proof of a theorem, was “That’s one from the book.” In this seminar we will survey a collection of elegant results and proofs in mathematics, ranging in topic from number theory to geometry to combinatorics and graph theory, and including some of Erdos’ favorite results. We will also discuss some of the history of the results and the mathematicians involved. A main text for the seminar will be “Proofs from the Book,” by Aigner and Ziegler. Students will be expected to do short readings or problem sets each week, and to give a final presentation at the end of the course.