MATH 5010

This course covers the History of the Calculus. It is rather dull but overall, you will learn a lot. It is fun to see how the calculus has evolved into the field that we study today! Dr. Parshall is a rather traditional teacher: readings from the textbook, lectures that cover exactly what was in the reading, and writing that is expected to be advanced. The class does cover your second-writing requirement, so it does make sense as to why it is so writing intensive; however, if you are a typical math student who is not accustomed to writing, just know that you will have to get in the habit of writing well. I took this course during the Fall 2020 semester, meaning we were taught completely through Zoom. Because of this, Dr. Parshall might have changed her syllabus to accommodate us learning amidst a pandemic. If not, here was the breakdown of the syllabus:

Participation (15%): Commenting on Piazza with questions about the readings assigned for the upcoming class; very annoying but you get used to just doing it to get the points.

Reading Summaries (35%): You are assigned mostly-weekly reading summaries that are just 2-page summaries of what you had read in the week prior. They are extremely boring and redundant but not crazy difficult; however, Dr. Parshall does grade quite harshly. Grammar, sentence structure, etc. are incredibly important. Also being succinct and learning how to summarize complicated proofs/methods into a few sentences to convey the "big-picture" is important. My advice is to take great notes during the class and use her words verbatim/what she covers most extensively in class to model you summaries ever week.

Homeworks (25%): Pretty short assignments that come up sporadically throughout the semester. Some are more challenging than others. I recommend finding friends in the small class to do the homeworks with. A lot of times, the questions require you to follow exactly what's modeled in the textbook, but sometimes the wording of the questions can be complicated because they come from a very old/less-than-great textbook.

Oral Presentation (25%): Each student is assigned to give a 20-minute presentation about one of the mathematicians you will study about throughout the semester. They do take a while to prepare for; however, Dr. Parshall is rather chill in her gradings of them. And they're also pretty fun/interesting if you do your presentation right! This is really an assignment that you can have fun with!

#tCF2020