Meeting times: We will not meet as a group. I will consult with each of you individually by email or in person to help you carry out the course work.
Prerequisites: You should be a junior or senior math major.
Email: stephen_pennell@uml.edu
Phone: (978) 934-2710
Fax: (978) 934-3053
Office: Olney 428V
Office Hours:
Monday 4:30 - 6:00 in Olney 428V
Wednesday 10 - 11 in Olney 428V
Thursday 9 - 10 in Olney 428V
Friday 11 - 12 in Southwick 321 (Tutoring Center).
Meetings at times other than my office hours can be
arranged by appointment. See me after class, call me on the phone, or send me an
email message.
As a senior math major you will complete the senior seminar, in which you will have the opportunity to explore an area of mathematics that interests you. You will need an advisor to direct you, and you will need to have your topic approved by the department. The purposes of Senior Seminar I are for you to identify a topic, find an advisor, and prepare a proposal. With those preliminaries out of the way, you will be able to start on your project right away when you take Senior Seminar II. To give you the tools you need to write your proposal and your project report, we will also learn a bit about the mathematical typesetting software LaTeX.
Please note: If you are a double major, and if your second major requires that you do a senior project with a mathematical component, you do not have to do a senior project in math as well. Just make sure you end up with enough math credits to fulfill the degree requirements, and please submit the attached project proposal form describing your project.
My goals for this course are for you to
I would appreciate hearing your goals for the course.
No textbook is required.
Suggested LaTeX references are Learning LaTeX, by David Griffiths and Desmond Higham, SIAM, 1997; and LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, 2nd ed., by Leslie Lamport, Addison-Wesley, 1994.
In order to pass this course, you must submit a typed project proposal, which means you must identify a seminar topic and find an advisor. The proposal form is available at http://faculty.uml.edu/spennell/Teaching/Senior_Seminar_I/proposal_form.pdf
To get an idea of what other students have done as their senior seminar projects, see the list of projects. You can either do an independent project, such as those on the list, or you can complete a substantial project as part of another course, such as 92.591 Linear Statistical Modeling and Regression or 92.450 Mathematical Modeling. If you choose to do a project as part of another course, you must get the approval of the course instructor. S/he will serve as your project advisor.
The other component of Senior Seminar I is the completion of 2 LaTeX assignments. The assignments are to generate LaTeX code to reproduce LaTeX Assignment 1 and LaTeX Assignment 2.
If you submit a proposal and successfully complete 2 LaTeX assignments, you will earn a grade of A. If you submit a proposal and complete only 1 LaTeX assignment, you will earn a grade of A-. If you submit a proposal and complete no LaTeX assignments, you will earn a grade of B. If you do not submit a proposal, your grade will be Incomplete, which will become an F if you do not submit a proposal by the final week of classes next semester.
Suggested due dates: LaTeX assignment #1 - February 8
LaTeX assignment #2 - February 22
Proposal - March 29