Math 4301 - Honours Seminar (2011-12)

This course is the capstone course for the Honour's program. Although there will be some lectures, students will be asked to work independently with a supervisor on a project in an area of math.

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News (Last Updated: Sept. 10, 2011)

• Sept. 10, 2011 Office hours added and template for project.
• August 18, 2011 The template for the Beamer talk was added.
• August 17, 2011 I added some more information to the webpage.
• August 3, 2011 Web page constructed. Check back for more details.

LaTeX Resoures

As part of this course, you will learn how to use LaTeX, a typesetting program for mathematics. Here are some resources for you:

• LaTeX Introduction Handout (a brief introduction to LaTex)
• LaTeX Homepage
• LaTeX Wikipage
• LaTeX Reference Sheet

Math Talks Resoures

Here's some information to help you with your math talks:

• The Do's and Don'ts of Giving a Math Talk
  The slides from my in-class presentation.
• How to talk mathematics by P.R. Halmos, a classic article by a well-known mathematician.
• A quick quide to Beamer
  A good place to hunt around for ideas and examples.

LaTeX Templates

Here are some LaTex templates that you can use for your own projects.

• Project Template |Latex file|pdf file|
• Beamer Talk Template |LaTeX file|pdf file|
  • When compiling a LaTeX file that uses the Beamer class, you need to compile it as a PDF document.

Online Math Resoures

You can find some examples of previous undegraduate projects on the department webpage:

• Lakehead Mathematics Honours Program

Since you will need to hunt out your own resources, here's how to find information.

• MathSciNet This is a mathematician's favourite tool! You need to be on campus to access this one. You can acess it at home, but you need to go through the library.

• Math arXiv PrePrint Server Preprints of papers, freely available. Since these papers haven't been refereed, treat with caution (many are fine, but there are incorrect papers on the arXiv).

• Google Scholar A good source of information, but lots of "noise". For math, MathSciNet is better.

• If you are looking for a research topic, you may want to check out the following journals:
  • College Mathematics Journal
  • American Mathematical Monthly

• Student Mathematical Library The American Mathematical Society has put together a nice series of books on topics accessible to advanced undergraduates. Lakehead's library has many of these books.

• Still stuck finding a topic? You can always browse the list of Mathematics Topics on wikipedia to get you going.

Course Information

Course Supervisor: Adam Van Tuyl

Office: RB 2015
Office Hours: M: 2:30-3:30 WF 9:30-10:30
Email: avantuyl AT lakeheadu.ca

Place and Time:

Class: TTh 4:00-5:30 in RB 3027

Handouts

All class handouts are available as PDF files.

Course Information
Handout for first day

Guide to Writing Proofs
Handout on writing proofs

Grading Scheme

See the course handout for details

Important Dates

Sept. 12, 2011
First semester classes begin

Sept. 30, 2011
Proposal of Topic Due

Oct. 10, 2011
Thanksgiving (no class)

Oct. 27, 2011
Draft Outlines Due

Nov. 29-Dec 1, 2011
Mini-talk

Dec. 5, 2011
First semester classes end
First Draft Due

Jan. 6, 2012
Second semester classes begin

Jan 19, 2012
Peer Review of Draft Due

Feb. 16, 2012
Second Draft Due

Feb. 20-24, 2012
Reading Break

Feb 27-March 2, 2012
Practise Talk Session

March 8, 2012
Peer Review of Practise Talk

March 27-April 3, 2012
Final Presentations

April 5, 2012
Second semester classes end
Final Projects Due

Links

Lakehead University

LU Math Department

Adam's Home Page

Student Code of Conduct