Assignments for Week 5
R = Readings ._._. W = Writings
- (W) A reality check.
Please send me an e-mail message (separate from your homework)
reporting your choices of:
- book for the book review (due Oct. 17)
- general history book (which you're presumably reading as we go along)
- term paper topic (if you have chosen it)
- (R) In our online textbook read the Classical and Hellenistic parts
of the chapter on Greece.
[Allen goes into great detail on the contents of Euclid's Elements.
You might want to save that part till last.]
Also read my "lecture" for the week
(when available).
- (RW) STANDING ASSIGNMENT EVERY WEEK:
Read the parts (if any) of your "general history" book
corresponding to this week's material.
You are encouraged to mail in ("report to the class") anything interesting or
important that you found in your reading that's not in the online material.
- (W) (For Monday, Oct. 6) From the
exercises on Classical and Hellenistic Greek mathematics (bottom half of
page):
- 2(a,d) ("translating" Euclid)
- 3 (Eudemus's theorem) [You should have no trouble proving it, too.]
- 6 (Archimedes's parabola theorem)
- 11 (cubes as finite progressions)
- 16 (two numbers in mean proportion). Also, explain why the Greeks were so
interested in this problem. (Hint: What if b = 2a?)
- Your choice of any one of the remaining 18 problems.
(Submit geometrical constructions by paper mail if necessary.)