Reading And Writing In Mathematics? The Math Book Club For Undergraduate Mathematics Courses
I propose to present an assignment that I implemented in my
liberal arts mathematics course—The Development of Mathematics—this past spring
semester. The course provides an
overview of significant mathematical ideas that have shaped the history of
mathematics. As a course that satisfied
the General Education Requirement (GER) at Montclair State University, it has a
writing requirement of 2000 words. The
assignment described below is my attempt to incorporate both writing and
reading into a mathematics course.
The assignment is called the Math Book Club. The objective of the assignment is to expose
students to books about mathematics with the hope that they would come to
appreciate some of the significant events that have taken place in the history
of mathematics. I was inspired to
develop this assignment because I wanted to come up with an alternative to the
traditional “book report” format that typifies this kind of assignment.
Students are given a list of six books. They have a week to learn more about each of
these books (at the bookstore or on the Internet) and submit a list of their
top three choices. The following are
the six books that were on the list for this past semester: Zero:
The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife, Euclid’s
Window by Leonard Mlodinow, Chaos:
Making a New Science by James Gleick, A Tour of the Calculus
by David Berlinski, and The Golden Ratio by Mario Livio. Based on their choices, students are
assigned to a group of four so that all six books are represented in the
class. The assignment takes place over
the course of one month; the book clubs meet once a week, for 30 minutes during
class. The students are given a pacing
schedule for each book, which identifies the sections of the books that are to
be covered for each of the four meetings.
Each student is assigned two roles for the book club—host and
scribe. The roles rotate among the
members of the groups so that there is a host and a scribe for each of the four
meetings. The host is responsible for
generating a list of thoughtful discussion questions about the predetermined
section of the book and bringing copies of the questions for the other
members. There is no minimum number of
questions, but the questions should sustain a conversation for at least 30
minutes. To create an atmosphere
conducive to an authentic book club, the host is also asked to bring a treat
for the rest of the group. (I provide
the coffee and tea.) As scribe,
students are responsible for writing a summary of the discussion that takes place. These summaries are in the form of papers,
and are collected the following week.
Students earn three grades for the book club assignment. The first is a participation grade. Assuming that all members are present for
each of the meetings, each member receives the same grade, based on the group’s
level of involvement in the discussions.
The other two grades—for the discussion questions and the summaries—are
assigned on an individual basis.
This assignment not only exposes students to books about
mathematics they probably would not pick up otherwise, but it also asks them to
consider, reflect upon, and write about aspects of mathematics that are
typically neglected in traditional mathematics courses. For the presentation, I will provide student
testimonials that describe their reactions to the assignment.