NOTE: This requirement is part of the previous Core, and only applies to students on the 2023-24 or prior Bulletin years. Please see the current Core and graduation requirements here.

(one unit to be taken during the first three years)

Learning Objectives

Students in Mathematical Approaches courses develop an appreciation of the power of Mathematics and formal methods to provide a way of understanding a problem unambiguously, describing its relation to other problems, and specifying clearly an approach to its solution. Students in Mathematical Approaches courses develop a variety of mathematical skills, an understanding of formal reasoning, and a facility with applications.

Guidelines

  1. These goals are met by courses that treat formal reasoning in one of the following areas.
    1. Quantitative reasoning: The ability to work with numeric data, to reason from those data, and to understand what can and can not be inferred from those data.
    2. Logical reasoning: The study of formal logic, at least to the extent that is required to understand mathematical proof.
    3. The algorithmic method: The ability to analyze a problem, to design a systematic way of addressing that problem (an algorithm), and to implement that algorithm in a computer programming language.
  2. Where these skills or methods are taught within the context of a discipline other than mathematics or computer science, they must receive greater attention than the disciplinary material.

Approved Courses

  • CSCI 161 Introduction to Computer Science
  • CSCI 261 Computer Science II
  • HON 213 Mathematics of Symmetry
  • MATH 103 Introduction to Contemporary Mathematics
  • MATH 150 Finite Mathematics
  • MATH 160 Introduction to Applied Statistics
  • MATH 170 Calculus for Business, Behavioral and Social Sciences
  • MATH 180 Calculus and Analytic Geometry I
  • MATH 181 Calculus and Analytic Geometry II
  • MATH 260 Intermediate Applied Statistics
  • MATH 280 Multivariate Calculus
  • PHIL 240 Formal Logic