• Each student in the class will be expected to submit an essay on some topic related to the course material.  The essay should not be a technical document that merely produces the proof of some theorem.  Ideally, it will deal with some aspect of set theory not covered in the lectures or it will explore the connection between some of the material covered in the course with some other branch of mathematics, computer science, philosophy, history, etc.  The essay could be historical in nature, for example, covering the motivation and/or circumstances around the development of set theory.
  
• The course textbook may provide some ideas for topics, but you might be better off looking through other sources.  See below for a few suggestions.  Dr. Valeriote may also be able to provide assistance with this.
  
• Once you have settled on a topic, please send it in an email to Dr. Valeriote, along with some of the books, articles and webpages that you are considering using as resources.
• Ideally, the same topic won't be selected by more than one or two students, so you should come up with a short list of possible esssay topics.
• Not counting the bibliography, the essay should contain approximately 1000 words.  You may make use of an appendix that contains some technical material that you'd like to include.  This won't count towards the word count, but it shouldn't be too long.
• All sources used in your essay should be properly referenced and you should reference at least two separate, published sources.
• Essays should be submitted in the pdf format.

Deadlines:

1. Friday, 17 November: send essay topic in an email to Dr. Valeriote.
2. Tuesday, 5 December by 11:59pm: submit an electronic copy of your essay to the Avenue to learn course site.

• "Set Theory" by Thomas Jech,
•  Enderton (Elements of Set Theory),
• Cunningham (Set Theory, A First Course), 
• Goldrei (Classic Set Theory).
  
• The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website entries on Zermelo, Cantor, Set theory, Godel, Cohen, ...

• The independence of the Continuum Hypothesis from ZFC
• Godel's constructible universe
• Set theoretic forcing
• The set theoretic multiverse
• Large cardinal axioms
• Inaccessible cardinals
• Measurable cardinals
• Analytic sets and CH
• Singular and Regular cardinals
• Zermelo
• Cantor
• Skolem's Paradox
• Russell's Theory of types
• Non well-founded set theory
• Descriptive set theory
• Axiom of Choice and equivalent statements
• Tarski-Banach Paradox
• Hamel Bases