Math 400/500 History of Mathematics
Instructor: Dr. Despeaux (pronounced “DES-po”)
Office: 294A Belk (next to the Math Lab)
Phone: 227-3825
E-Mail: despeaux@wcu.edu Webpage: http://paws.wcu.edu/despeaux
Office Hours:
Monday, Wednesday, Friday
11:00-12:00
Thursday in McKee 204C
5:30-6:00 PM
Text: John Fauvel and Jeremy Gray, The History of Mathematics: A Reader (Macmillan, 1987).
Supplementary CD-ROM: Historical Modules for the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics, ed.
by Victor J. Katz and Karen Dee Michalowicz. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of
America, 2004.
Attendance: Since this class meets only once a week, missing one of these classes is equivalent to
missing three regular classes in a row. Keep this in mind and make every effort to attend classes
consistently. If you cannot make class, contact a classmate for notes and assignments, and plan to
meet with me for an office hour before the following week’s class.
Course Requirements
.
Quizzes: Each week, you will have a short quiz based on the previous week’s reading and
discussion. These quizzes will count for 20% of your grade. No make-up quizzes will be given. If
you have an extended illness or emergency, contact me and we will make arrangements.
Annotated Bibliographies: 10% of your grade will come from a series of annotated bibliographies
that you will turn in. These bibliographies will help you choose your project topic and will introduce
you to resources for using the history of mathematics in teaching.
Research Project: 45% of your grade will come from a research project on a prominent figure or
field in the history of mathematics. You will be graded on a project proposal, a poster presentation,
a report on the Smoky Mountain Undergraduate Research Conference on the History of
Mathematics on Saturday, April 22nd and a paper. This work should be completed on your own, in
your own words. For Undergraduates: your paper should be 7 to 9 pages long (that is, at least 7
and no more than 9 pages, not including the bibliography) with 12-point font, double spaced, 1 inch
top, bottom, left, and right margins. The paper must be fully cited with footnotes. Extra
Requirement for MATH 500 graduate students: your paper must be 10 to 12 pages long.
Final: You will have an in-class, comprehensive final on May 5that 6PM. This exam will count for
25% of your grade. Please contact me early if you anticipate any conflicts with the time of our final.
Bring two blue books to the final.
Grades: Your grade will be calculated in the following manner:
Quizzes
Annotated Bibliographies
Research Project
Final
Total
20%
10%
45%
25%
100%
Grades for Graduate Students will then be assigned as follows:
90-100 A
70-79
C
80-89
B
Below 70
F
Undergraduates will be assigned grades according to the following:
************
93 – 100: A
90 – 92: A-
87 – 89: B+
83 – 86: B
80 – 82: B-
77 – 79: C+
73 – 76: C
70 – 72: C-
67 – 69: D+
63 – 66: D
60 – 62: D-
Below 60: F
************
************
Students with Disabilities: Western Carolina University makes every effort to provide appropriate
accommodations for students with documented disabilities in compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act. To receive academic accommodations, students must be registered with the office
of Student Support Services (contact Carol Mellen at 227-7127, Killian Annex). The letter received
from Student Support Services should be presented as documentation to the instructor as early in
the semester as possible.
Style Sheet for the Writing of Papers1













1
Start with an outline. Give a structure, and have a plan for your paper. Ask yourself, “what
are my goals for this paper?” State these goals in your introduction, and elaborate on them in
your conclusion.
Always have a dictionary and a thesaurus by your side. These sources can be paper or
electronic (the Oxford English Dictionary can be reached from the Hunter Library web page
(http://library.wcu.edu/online/title.htm). Wordsmyth--The Educational Dictionary and
Thesaurus is at http://www.wordsmyth.net).
Do not use contractions in formal writing.
Do not begin sentences with conjunctions such as “and” or “but.”
Avoid the verb “to be” and its various forms. The verb “to be” is a weak verb and, as such,
conveys little real meaning. Strong verbs kick your writing up a notch.
Avoid the passive voice. For example, do not say that “it was found…” when you could say
“Archimedes found that.”
Vary your sentence length. A paper with nothing but long and complicated sentences lulls
the reader to sleep, while a paper of nothing but short and choppy sentences rattles the
reader’s nerves.
Strive for a smoothly flowing text. Be careful to set up paragraphs correctly. Each paragraph
should deal with one idea. Paragraphs should move logically and smoothly from one to the
next, as you ideas move logically and smoothly from one to the next.
Give full credit to the sources you consult in the footnotes and in the bibliography (Note:
Used “Ibid.” (a Latin abbreviation that tells the reader “from the same place”) if you have
two concurrent citations from the same source.) .
Do not be afraid to rewrite a sentence, a paragraph, or even your whole paper, if you are not
satisfied with it.
Strive for clarity in your writing.
Consider visiting the Writing Center at Hunter Library. You can get FREE help with writing
there!!
Practical note: Get your sources EARLY!!! You may have to use interlibrary loan or ABC
Express (an intralibrary service between Asheville, Boone, and Cullowhee); these services
take time, so do not wait until the last minute to do your research!! If you need an article that
is not available in the ABC system, consider using INGENTA through Hunter Library. This
service allows you to download articles from the internet.
Adapted from “Style Sheet for the Writing of Papers” by K. Parshall
Research Project for MATH 400/500
You will be responsible for a research project on a topic from the history of mathematics this
semester. This project will count 45% of your grade. You will create your project in several stages,
and your work on each of these stages will factor into your grade.
***For all stages of this project, you must avoid plagiarism.*** See
http://www.wcu.edu/WritingCenter/isource.asp?page=aplagiarism.html to educate yourself about
this VERY important issue. Any plagiarism will threaten your grade for the entire course.
I expect you to use the Turabian documentation system in your project. You can find the rules for this
system on the writing center’s website
http://www.wcu.edu/WritingCenter/isource.asp?page=turabian_format.html or from the
paperback book, Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers. 6th Edition. (Chicago: University Press,
1996).
Stage 1: Project Proposal (5% of course grade; due 6PM, February 16th): I will expect from
you a short (1 to 2 pages) proposal of your presentation or paper. This proposal should briefly
describe the topic of your paper. It should also include at least five of the sources you have found
on your topic, with short notes about how you will use each source in an annotated bibliography
style. This proposal should be written like a paper, with proper spelling and grammar.
Stage 2: Poster Presentation, Thursday, March 16th (15% of course grade). You will give a
poster presentation on your project topic. I will grade your posters according to a rubric that I will
give you. Judges will evaluate your posters to determine the top ten. The authors of the top three
posters will give talks at SMURCHOM in lieu of stages 3 and 4 (their stage 3 and 4 grades will
instead come from their talk). The seven other top authors will present their posters at the
SMURCHOM poster session; they may skip stage 3 (their stage 3 grade will come from their poster
presentations at SMURCHOM).
Stage 3: Report on SMURCHOM (5% of course grade; due 6PM Thursday May 4th) After
attending the Smoky Mountain Undergraduate Research Conference on the History of Mathematics
on Saturday, 22 April, write a 1-2-page report on how the experience has influenced your thoughts
on your upcoming paper.
Stage 4: Paper (20% of course grade; due 6PM April 20th): For Undergraduates: your paper
should be 7 to 9 pages long (that is, at least 7 and no more than 9 pages, not including the
bibliography) with 12-point font, double spaced, 1 inch top, bottom, left, and right margins. The
paper must be fully cited with footnotes. Extra Requirement for MATH 500 graduate students:
your paper must be 10 to 12 pages long. Present two paper copies of your paper (one will be
returned to you with a grade and one I will keep), and e-mail me one electronic copy.
Grading and Due Dates: One letter grade per day will be deducted for late submissions for
each stage of the project.
Valid Sources: You may not use websites as sources for your paper. However, if a journal article or
book has been put into electronic format on the web, you may use that source (cite the source as a
journal article or a book, and not a website). Avoid using encyclopedias, unless the encyclopedia is
an historical document itself (for example, the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1850). If at all possible,
use at least one primary source. Try to use both books and journal articles. Include at least five
sources in your paper.
Good places to start:
 http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/ check out this website for the biographies of
LOTS of mathematicians. You may NOT use it as one of your sources, but it gives
bibliographies that will point you to other sources.
 The BSHM website (http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/bshm/ ) can point you to websites that
will give you ideas. The link there to websites on the history of mathematics will point you
towards primary sources that have been scanned and put on the web (you MAY use any
book that has been scanned and put on the web as a source).
 Dictionary of Scientific Biography. You can find this in the Hunter Library Reference Section.
 If you want to know more about a British mathematician, see the Dictionary of National
Biography, also in Hunter Library.
 http://www.ams.org/mathscinet
This website database will direct you to articles on the history of mathematics (you may have
to access it on a Hunter Library computer or a WCU computer). IMPORTANT: go to “full
search” and enter “01” under the “MSC Primary” field. This will limit your search to the
history of mathematics.