Week of March 18-22

  • This week I will be gone at a conference, but you will have a substitute teacher. I am leaving worksheets and lecture notes etc. in my absence. Please attend class as regularly, as we are covering important material.
  • I’m leaving up this one website post for the week. I will post under “Lectures” the worksheet material etc.
  • Don’t forget that Monday (the 18th) you have Writing Assignment TASK A due; that’s your task for this weekend. I will be looking at these remotely via canvas and giving feedback (via canvas) as quickly as possible after you hand them in (so that everyone is on track with a good topic before spring break!).
  • We will skip homework for this Friday and Homework will be due after spring break. (With the snow day and the quiz, we hardly covered any new material to test; and anyway it’s spring break.) Homework due after break has been posted.
  • As for “45 minute tasks,” just keep the habit but use your 45 minutes to review worksheets, lecture notes, and associated textbook material.
  • I may update this post with a little more detail on Saturday, March 16th.
  • After that, enjoy your spring break!

To Do for Wed Mar 13

  • Today (Monday) we had a worksheet, but we only just started it. Please complete the section titled “Additive Dynamics” (up to end of page 5) and then compare to this brief cheatsheet: For item 1, it should look like one big cycle; item 2 you should have two cycles; for item 3, 5 pairs; for item 4, 3 cycles; finish to the end of page 5 at home. We will pick up there on Wednesday. Also, there was a typo on the second diagram on page 6, fixed in the online version here.
  • Don’t forget to bring your worksheet back to class on Wed.
  • You have homework and a QUIZ on Friday.
  • YOU HAVE A TASK DUE ON MONDAY. Read all about the Writing Assignment on the menu above, including Task A. Please let me know if you have questions. Right now, spend a little time looking through the suggested topics or googling or wikipedia-crawling around, and start to zero in on a topic.
  • For reading, we have covered Chapter 5 up to page 139, and are now starting on Chapter 6 (we have skipped pages 140-146 for now).

To Do for Mon, Mar 11

  • This Friday we did a worksheet in class. Please continue it, getting to the end of Section 5.
  • Do associated reading in the textbook, p. 134-139.
  • Invent and solve a couple linear congruential equations. You should be able to solve any linear congruential equation at this point (ax = b mod n).
  • Homework has been posted.
  • Material to study for the quiz (next Friday!) has been posted. It will be updated on Monday/Wednesday after lectures to reflect the newest material we cover those days, so check back.

To Do for Fri, Mar 8

  • Take the quiz on canvas about the Sage workshop (this helps me assess where the class is and also improve the worksheet for next time).
  • Read Chapter 5, from beginning to page 136 inclusive. Keep reading if you have time (if so, this will preview our next material).
  • Contemplate the question when can you solve a linear congruential equation (i.e. solve ax = b mod N)? Try to rephrase this problem into one just about integers.
  • Note, on the Resources page I now list tutors in MARC (and hours) where they know and are willing to teach number theory. Near the bottom.
  • IMPORTANT: Thursday’s office hours are 10:30-11:30 instead of 2-3 pm.

To Do For Mon, Mar 4

  • DON’T FORGET: Monday is a Sage workshop in BESC 385.
  • Finish writing up the proof that congruence is an equivalence relation (from class; we just had transitivity to go).
  • Contemplate how to compute 2100 modulo 11 by hand. How can you do this with the fewest operations?
  • Contemplate what 1/2 should be modulo 7, if we are going to define it in some useful way. Why?
  • Now, read p. 127-133 of your text (This is Chapter 5, the first 7 pages).
  • Homework for next week has been posted.