Hi all!

Welcome to your first daily post.  Between every pair of lectures, there’s a daily post, to which you should devote 1 hour of concentrated study time.  This is a homework assignment, but you get full credit if and only if you put in 1 hour of worthwhile studying and useful effort toward the assignment.  Your grade does not depend on how much of the post you finish or how correct your answers are.  You will track your progress with this self-evaluation sheet.  You will get feedback and/or check your own solutions.

For each daily post, I will give you tasks and problems to do.  In isolated cases where it is clearly to the benefit of your studying, you may choose to skip problems or spend your 1 hour on what is most important for advancing your understanding of the course (please explain if so).  But in most cases, your task is to work through the tasks posted here, which will solidify the material of the last lecture and prepare you for the next lecture.  You do not need to finish everything: if you have put in 1 hour of honest, concentrated, struggling effort to understand (definitely no TV in the background, no copying other solutions, no mindless googling; you must be working your brain), then you get full credit.

When you are finished, you will hand in a record of your work to the daily dropbox on canvas.  Our grader will return feedback on one practice proof.  The grader appreciates if this is at the top/beginning of the work you hand in, so it is easy to find.  But you don’t need to work on it first (in fact, in many cases it makes sense to do the other tasks first, so read them all before beginning).

Your proof for feedback:

Sudoku Proof

Your tasks for today:

1. Read all the syllabus content on our website (all the tabs at the top of the website).  This describes the course.  Some small changes have occurred in the lead-up to today’s lecture.
2. Make sure you have figured out how to get on discord (instructions inside canvas).  Discord is our online communication tool; it pops up a notification on my phone when you ask a question and I try to be as available as possible.  You can also work with your peers on here.
3. Write down your definitions and theorems from today’s activity (see instructions and polyhedron sheet), in the best language you feel you can.  This is a writing exercise.  How can you be as clear as possible?
4. Do your practice proof for feedback (sudoku — there’s a link above in the post).  (Please also indicate if you’d be willing to have your solution shared for discussion in class, anonymously.)
5. Read Chapter 1 of Hammack (link to PDF in upper left of website), up to the end of Section 1.1.  In class on Monday, we will discuss effective strategies for reading a mathematics textbook, but for now just try to find your own strategies to read effectively and actively, so that you are exercising your brain and engaging as you go.
6. Record for yourself 3 strategies you discovered or used during the reading to help yourself learn and engage during the reading.
7. With what time remains (if any), do exercises for Section 1.1.  You may choose which exercises to do.  Solutions to odd numbered problems are available in the back, and I won’t be writing up solutions to even-numbered ones (although I will check anything you ask me to check or discuss anything during office hour).  In class on Monday, we will discuss effective strategies for making use of these exercises in independent work.
8. Put all your work together into a pdf file, with your proof for feedback at the top/front.  Hand this in on canvas (there’s a box marked with the due date 1/23).