Mathematical Sciences - Colloquium

Our profession is in desperate trouble - immediate and present danger. The absolute numbers and the trends are clear. If something is not done soon, we will see mathematics department faculties decimated and an already dismal job market completely collapse. Simply put, we are losing our students.
          --From the Garfunkel-Young Notices of AMS article "The Sky is Falling"

I will argue that undergraduate math education has been frozen for so long that it is unable to meet modern demands expected of it by its students and by client departments. Not only has course material become weighted down by what Peter Lax calls "inert" material, but the ways of teaching mathematics have also become bogged down by the lecture method.

This talk will suggest new ways of injecting technology into math courses so that students play and get the feel of a new idea before the jargon goes on. It will also talk about good use of technology versus poor uses of technology.

It will also deal with some moral dilemmas that face math instructors such as:

• Confusion about the role of Algebra: Is algebra prerequisite to everything?
• Confusion about how much can be done without formal proofs.
• Confusion about whether students have the right to know about advanced mathematics.
• Confusion about the nature of mathematics.

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