Project Laboratory in Mathematics A Taste of Research
no one could figure out what a math lab was as in a laboratory have Erlenmeyer flasks and things where are the flasks where's the equipment in a in mathematics my contention is that this lab follows the scientific method students take many courses most of them have a set syllabus it's organized it goes from a beginning through definitions and theorems to an end they're asked to solve problems which are well posed and have a have an expected answer this course is completely different because here the questions are not well posed they have to decide what part of this question they're going to focus on they have to decide where the exciting mathematics is going to be it's actually very hard to get beyond the smooth outer shell of a problem we rarely give ourselves a specific target and aim only at that target it's very easy just to you know write down the statement of the problem and some equations that you know which of elevant and then just sit and ...