MAT 117-01: Guidelines for Group Projects - Math Requirements & Presentations - Prof. Wesl, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Mathematics

Download MAT 117-01: Guidelines for Group Projects - Math Requirements & Presentations - Prof. Wesl and more Study Guides, Projects, Research Mathematics in PDF only on Docsity! Guidelines for Group Projects MAT 117-01 March 8, 2007 1 Requirements A major component of your grade this semester will be a group project. You will work with a group totalling 3-5 people (including yourself), and select a topic in pure or applied mathematics which is not covered in the course and which is mutually agreeable to the group and to me. You will prepare a paper and an oral presentation, each of which will explain the topic to your classmantes. Please observe the schedule below for the projects. 1.1 Important Dates Task Due on Group members and topics March 5 Draft of written report April 6 Final written report April 20 Oral Presentations April 30 and May 2 1.2 Written Reports Your written report should be thoroughly self-contained, and should give all explanations necessary to explain your subject. It should have mathematical content that you understand, and should effectively convey that content to the reader. I can help you locate resources that may be helpful to you. Talking with me about your project, how it’s going, and what you wish you could find for it is a good idea. Be adventuresome in your choice of topics. I’d dearly love to learn something I don’t already know. Some topics will be more demanding than others, but the grade has some built-in factors to reward those who take risks by stretching their abilities. Write well. Can you imagine anything more deadly to read than a badly- written math paper? Use standard grammar, etc. (unless you have good reason not to). Give the paper some structure. It should not only have an enlighten- ing introduction and conclusion, but should move smoothly from one place to another in between. Liberal arts majors, here is a chance to shine. 1 I still believe in the advice of Strunk and White (Elements of Style, 4ed): Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnec- essary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a ma- chine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. Your writing should be professional in tone. In formal writing, the third per- son is usually preferred over the second, and slightly over the first, but avoiding artificial language is more important. Also, the active voice is usually pre- ferred over the passive, but again, good expression is paramount. For instance, I could not figure out an equally honest and expressive way to write the last two sentences in the active voice. It is also sometimes tempting to think that formal, literate language means using fancy words. Here, the advice of Strunk and White helps again: “Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready, and able.” While over-used, under-specific words are generally less desireable, one distinguishing mark I have seen in the best-educated people I know is that they can, when they wish, talk more plainly than anyone else. Be judicious in your use of sources. With rare exceptions, sources have authors (and no, “http://www.wwwww.ww....” is not an author), who have (one hopes) qualifications. In citing sources, use whatever format you wish, but it should, at minimum, include the author, title, publisher (if applicable), and date of each source. In your use of the material you should take account of any relevant qualifications the author has — not so that you can be obsequious, but so that you can know if the author is a hack. Be aware of your obligation as a scholar (not to mention the course and university academic honesty policies) to give proper credit for everything. If a wording, or even an idea, doesn’t come from you, you should be sure to give proper credit for it. Rewording a sentence that you took from a book isn’t enough to make it your own. I shouldn’t have to say anything about borrowing the wording directly without credit. The paper should be suitable for presentation as your scholarly work. It should be typed and cleanly presented, and should be suitable for distribution to your classmates. I’d like to make the collection of all of the written papers available to your classmates by passing out photocopies and by posting the papers on a web page. You should turn in something that won’t embarass you if one of your classmates is running against you for high office one day. Students often ask me about how long the paper should be. It is extremely important that it be of the right length. However, it’s hard to say globally just what this length will be. Some projects will have more pictures or require more words to explain the same depth of understanding, and others less. Hence, the criterion is this: neither too long (that is, not inflated by senseless fluff, needless repetition, or extraneous analysis) nor too short (that is, not too brief to properly support its analysis). 2