Writing Projects for Mathematics Courses: Crushed Clowns, Cars & Coffee to Go

Classroom Resource Materials

by Annalisa Crannell, Gavin LaRose, Tom Ratliff

This volume is a collection of writing projects suitable in a wide range of undergraduate mathematics courses, from a survey of mathematics to differential equations. The projects vary in their level of difficulty and in the mathematics that they require, but are similar in the mode of presentation and use of applications. Students see these problems as real in a way that textbooks problems are not, even though many of the characters involved (dime–store detectives and CEOs) are obviously fictional. The stories are sometimes fanciful and sometimes grounded in standard scientific applications, but the mere existence of the story draws the students in and makes the problem relevant. The book is the combined effort of four instructors who have used writing projects in their own courses. They provide an easy-to-use, widely applicable set of course materials that instructors can adopt and adapt to their own courses. An extensive set of class-tested projects is included along • implementation notes which highlight student difficulties,
• information about project solutions, and
• advice for grading writing projects.

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Annalisa Crannell is professor of mathematics at Franklin & Marshall College.

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and fun writing projects that were used in math classes

I am strongly in favor of using writing projects in upper level mathematics classes. They force the students to think long and hard about a particular problem and being forced to write up the solution organizes their thoughts in ways nothing else can. This book is a collection of writing projects used by the authors in their classes.
Each project begins with the following information:

*) Name of the project, the person who created it and the course it was used for.
*) The mathematical concepts needed to solve the problem.
*) The level of realism in the problem and data
*) The reaction the students had to the problem, in particular how difficult it was for them.
*) Credits
*) Any technology needed or that would be helpful, such as a graphing calculator or symbolic mathematics package

The project is presented in the form of a letter from an individual requesting their assistance and explaining the problem. A solution to the problem then appears after the letter.
In general these projects are real-world enough that the students can understand the need to solve them. This is of enormous assistance, as even the best math students have difficulty when writing about mathematics. I found the projects to be very helpful as I begin to ponder what kind of topics I would want my students to write about in a senior thesis project.

This review also appears on Amazon