The Art of Mathematics

Fall, 2015

Course Description: Did you ever wonder when your mathematics courses would stop promising to show you that mathematics is all around you and finally get around to it? Did you like mathematics best when you got to play around with cool ideas and least when the instructor droned on and on about some algebraic topic that seemed to be both impenetrable and completely insignificant? Then this is the course for you! This course is designed to provide you with the opportunity to see mathematics more broadly as the study of patterns of all sorts by means of hands-on investigations. (There will be essentially no lectures in this class.) You will gain a broader appreciation of mathematics by exploring ways in which the artistic, aesthetic, intellectual and humanistic aspects of mathematics are as important as its utility. Topics may include: music, dance, art and sculpture, games, topology, chaos and fractals, symmetry, elementary number theory, modern geometry and mathematical reasoning. This course will satisfy the QR requirement. No prerequisite.

Most materials for the course are freely downloadable and can be found here:

The additional required text: The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking by Edward Burger and Michael Starbird can be bought at the Kenyon Bookstore.