Survey of Modern Mathematics
Level: Open to students entering grades 11 or 12 or freshman year of college in fall 2010.
Session: I, June 28-July 16, 2010
Days & Time: Monday-Friday, 10:00 AM-12:00 PM and 1:30-4:00 PM
Instructor(s): Burton Budick, Staff
Prerequisites: Thorough knowledge of high school mathematics, up to but not including calculus. Students are selected on the basis of their aptitude for mathematics.
Related Courses: Students interested in this course might also be interested in Mathematical Boot Camp for Budding String Theorists, offered in Session II.
Course Description
This course is designed to acquaint high school students with some of the exciting developments in modern mathematics, including differential geometry, differential equations, chaos and fractals, and computational geometry.
Students meet for a two-hour lecture in the morning, and participate in a supervised computer laboratory session in the afternoon. Each student is assigned to a computer terminal for completion of laboratory exercises designed to expand upon the focus of the morning lecture. The exercises employ the special Mathematica packages and graphics that have recently become available for the advanced topics mentioned above. An additional benefit of the course is that students become proficient in the use of Mathematica.
Instructor(s)
Faculty
Burton Budick
Burton Budick earned a B.A. from Harvard College and was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. A specialist in experimental atomic and nuclear physics, Dr. Budick first came to Columbia University in 1962 as a research physicist and lecturer. He has taught at Columbia as a lecturer for the past decade and he is a full professor of physics at New York University.
Specific course information, such as hours and instructors, are subject to change at the discretion of the University.
