Course Descriptions

Textbook:  For current textbook please refer to our Master Textbook List page

Math 103 is a popular course taken by many undergraduates not majoring in the mathematical, physical, or life sciences, to satisfy a quantitative course requirement for graduation. It is intended to cohere well with students' liberal arts and social science interests, by investigating applications of mathematics, much of it developed only relatively recently, in contexts which are relevant to individuals who do not necessarily have strong interests in the sciences.

These topics include

• the mathematics of voting (when there are 3 or more candidates in an election, how do you decide who should win, and how can we define suitable notions of "fair" and "unfair" outcomes?),
• weighted voting systems (how much power does each party really have in a parliamentary system, or each nation on the UN Security council, or each state in the US electoral college?),
• the mathematics of apportionment (how many congressional seats is each state entitled to, and what mathematical difficulties can result from apportioning them?),
• fair division of goods (how can co-owners of a store location but with different retail businesses divide the year fairly? if siblings inherit an estate, what is a fair way to divide it?),
• financial mathematics and exponential growth (if you invest $100 every month at a certain interest rate, how much will be there in 30 years?),
• Euler circuits (what is an efficient way to drive over every road in your town, e.g., if you're plowing out the roads after a snowstorm?),
• the Traveling Salesman Problem (given a table of airfares, how do you find the cheapest itinerary for visiting 10 cities in any order?),
• and the mathematics of networks (to build the cheapest possible high speed rail system linking a certain group of cities, which pairs of cities should have direct links built between them?).

You will not be left wondering, "what does this have to do with real life?" The course is also intended to reinforce underlying mathematical skills. 

Flipped Sections

Each semester, we offer 2-3 traditional sections and the remainder of sections are of a flipped format so that students can choose the format which is best for their learning style. The flipped classroom model has students first learn the subject matter, on their own time, from carefully working through a series of video lecture segments posted on Canvas interspersed with practice problems. The weekly class meeting will follow up on the students' online work, beginning or ending with a quiz on that work, and proceeding with a highly interactive workshop session. The flipped format requires a certain extra discipline, to keep up with the online component of the course. But it does have the advantage that students can rewatch the videos as often as they need to, and can also benefit from a more interactive classroom experience.

SAS Core Curriculum Learning Goals

Math 103 fulfills both the Quantitative Information (QQ) and Mathematical or Formal Reasoning (QR) learning goals of the SAS Core Curriculum:
QQ: Formulate, evaluate, and communicate conclusions and inferences from quantitative information.
QR: Apply effective and efficient mathematical or other formal processes to reason and to solve problems.

General Syllabus and Review Materials

Please note that ultimate authority over the precise schedule of topics, quiz policy, and other details rests with the individual instructore in consultation with the course coordinator. The syllabus distributed in class and/or posted on the Canvas site for an individual section takes precedence over the one posted on this web site.

Final Exam Review Sheets:

Schedule of Sections:

01:640:103 Schedule of Sections