The Boney Blog of Nowhere.

I very much enjoyed this course. It seemed to be a blend of items and skills necessary for advancement in the field of Mathematics. As such, it was very much up to the individual student to find structure and discipline in order to excel. But once this adjustment was made, the class was very rewarding. For the first portion of the semester, we learned to write in the LaTeX environment through course instruction and small weekly assignments so that we could each write a final research paper on a topic of our choosing. I feel it may have been more beneficial to have two or three smaller research papers throughout the semester, though, We did get practice with certain elements -- mainly writing mathematical formulas and the like -- but simple typesetting and page formatting proved to be somewhat difficult in the lead up to the semester's end. Regardless, I was able to receive full marks on my final paper below. I chose to write on the subject of Fermat's Little Theorem as we were broaching the subject of Group Theory by the time the semester came to a close.
The rest of the course was -- as you would expect -- devoted to a historical timeline of Mathematics that led us through the Euclidean Algorithm, geometrical analyses of various algebraically proven theorems, i.e. completing the square, etc. (in the mindset that this would have been the way in which such a train of thought was explored long before it was proven in symbols), all the way through to a brief introduction to group theory. This gave us the opportunity to lightly gliss the path that must have led Evariste Galois to his own interpretation of the subject/field (pun intended).
I feel that I would have enjoyed a bit more history -- my expectations were that we would look at a theorem and study the history leading up to it, then once we were back to present day, start the whole process over again with a new theorem in another mathematical realm. I think that would be a fantastic way to learn the history of mathematics, but it might be more suited to a year-long sequence instead of a single semester. In summary, though, I really enjoyed the course. We only explored the tip of the iceberg, as it were, but it was very enjoyable, if a little less than satisfying.