Course Goals for Math 108

Improve basic algebra skills (chapters 1-6 of text).
Improve thinking skills:
- Come to see algebra as a structured body of ideas; seeing the "big picture."
- Learn how to analyze complex problems, i.e., breaking them into parts.
- Expand capacity to think abstractly.
- Expand capacity to think hard for long periods of time. (Concentration.)
- Gain some exposure to logical or deductive reasoning.
- Improve memory, especially by seeing patterns and connections.
- Develop creativity and imagination in problem solving.
Improve work ethic:
- Improve organizational skills.
- Develop self-discipline and motivation.
- Hopefully come to see the value of learning.

[Some] think that truth is only what sounds nice. If truth should prove to be something statistical, dry, or factual, something difficult to find and requiring study, they do not recognize it as truth; it does not intoxicate them.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties

Classroom Etiquette

Turn off any cell phones or beepers.
Do not read the newspaper or listen to a walkman in class.
Come on time. Do not leave early.
Do not disrupt the class with loud or excessive talking.

These rules are to help insure that you and your classmates can learn and do well in the course. I reserve the right to count you absent in the unlikely event that behavior problems should arise. In severe cases you may be given an F in the course and asked not to return. (I have never had to do this.)

To learn and not think over what you have learned is perfectly useless. To think without having first learned is dangerous.

Confucius, as fictionalized in Gore Vidal's novel Creation , Book 6, Chapter 7.