To Do for Fri, Jan 18

  • Make sure you will have your text by the weekend ideally, or Monday at the latest.
  • If you haven’t completed the tasks for previous days, in particular the “get-to-know-you” quiz on canvas, please catch up now.
  • First take a look at, but don’t yet complete, the online quiz on canvas entitled “Reading p.10-17.” Just get a sense of the questions being asked.
  • Now actively read pages 10-17 of your textbook (this was handed out as a photocopy in class on Wednesday, for those who do not have it yet; if you don’t have a copy or the text, please email me). By actively, I mean as modeled in class Wednesday. You might also find it useful to check out the links for Wednesday’s lecture on the “Lectures” page at right, for more guidance. Make notes in the margin or your notebook, of your active reading process.
  • Now please complete the online quiz “Reading p.10-17” on canvas after reading. You can have your text open while working on this, together with any notes you’ve made during the reading or class, and you can look up resources if you find it helpful.
  • In class we did an activity in the last ten minutes. Please bring your thoughts on that activity to start Friday’s class. Here is the activity, in case you need a review: It is a two player game. The board contains some number of positive integers to start. Players take turns. Each player attempts to find two numbers on the board, whose positive difference is not yet written on the board. Then he adds that number to the board. He who cannot add a number loses. The question is to analyse who wins this game, for a given set of starting numbers. For example, try “10, 15, 50” or “3, 5, 7”.
  • Note that in class Monday, I wrote the wrong error term for the prime number theorem. Check out “Lectures” at right for some typed notes relating to that, including the correct error term. You might like to peruse these further to follow up on any of Monday’s motivating questions that interested you. In particular, they explain the cool pictures on the back of the question sheet.