Glenn Stevens

Al Cuoco

 Bowen Kerins

Darryl Yong

Mary Pilgrim

Designed for precollege teachers by a collaborative of teachers, educators, and mathematicians, Probability and Games is based on a course offered in the Summer School Teacher Program at the Park City Mathematics Institute. This course leads participants through an introduction to probability and statistics, with particular focus on conditional probability, hypothesis testing, and the mathematics of election analysis. These ideas are tied together through low-threshold entry points including work with real and fake coin-flipping data, short games that lead to key concepts, and inroads to connecting the topics to number theory and algebra. But this book isn't a “course” in the traditional sense. It consists of a carefully sequenced collection of problem sets designed to develop several interconnected mathematical themes. These materials provide participants with the opportunity for authentic mathematical discovery—participants build mathematical structures by investigating patterns, use reasoning to test and formalize their ideas, offer and negotiate mathematical definitions, and apply their theories and mathematical machinery to solve problems. Probability and Games is a volume of the book series “IAS/PCMI—The Teacher Program Series” published by the American Mathematical Society. Each volume in this series covers the content of one Summer School Teacher Program year and is independent of the rest.

Probability and Games

Bowen Kerins

Benjamin Sinwell

Designed for precollege teachers by a collaborative of teachers, educators, and mathematicians, Probability through Algebra is based on a course offered in the Summer School Teacher Program at the Park City Mathematics Institute. But this book isn't a "course" in the traditional sense. It consists of a carefully sequenced collection of problem sets designed to develop several interconnected mathematical themes, and one of the goals of the problem sets is for readers to uncover these themes for themselves. The specific themes developed in Probability through Algebra introduce readers to the algebraic properties of expected value and variance through analysis of games, to the use of generating functions and formal algebra as combinatorial tools, and to some applications of these ideas to questions in probabilistic number theory. Probability through Algebra is a volume of the book series "IAS/PCMI-The Teacher Program Series" published by the American Mathematical Society. Each volume in that series covers the content of one Summer School Teacher Program year and is independent of the rest. Titles in this series are co-published with the Institute for Advanced Study/Park City Mathematics Institute. Members of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) receive a 20% discount from list price.

Probability through Algebra

 Darryl Yong

Designed for precollege teachers by a collaborative of teachers, educators, and mathematicians, Applications of Algebra and Geometry to the Work of Teaching is based on a course offered in the Summer School Teacher Program at the Park City Mathematics Institute. But this book isn't a "course" in the traditional sense. It consists of a carefully sequenced collection of problem sets designed to develop several interconnected mathematical themes, and one of the goals of the problem sets is for readers to uncover these themes for themselves. The specific theme developed in Applications of Algebra and Geometry to the Work of Teaching is the use of complex numbers--especially the arithmetic of Gaussian and Eisenstein integers--to investigate some questions that are at the intersection of algebra and geometry, like the classification of Pythagorean triples and the number of representations of an integer as the sum of two squares. Applications of Algebra and Geometry to the Work of Teaching is a volume of the book series "IAS/PCMI-The Teacher Program Series" published by the American Mathematical Society. Each volume in that series covers the content of one Summer School Teacher Program year and is independent of the rest. Titles in this series are co-published with the Institute for Advanced Study/Park City Mathematics Institute. Members of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) receive a 20% discount from list price.

Applications of Algebra and Geometry to the Work of Teaching

Joseph Rotman

Learning Modern Algebra aligns with the CBMS Mathematical Education of Teachers–II recommendations, in both content and practice. It emphasizes rings and fields over groups, and it makes explicit connections between the ideas of abstract algebra and the mathematics used by high school teachers. It provides opportunities for prospective and practicing teachers to experience mathematics for themselves, before the formalities are developed, and it is explicit about the mathematical habits of mind that lie beneath the definitions and theorems.This book is designed for prospective and practicing high school mathematics teachers, but it can serve as a text for standard abstract algebra courses as well. The presentation is organized historically: the Babylonians introduced Pythagorean triples to teach the Pythagorean theorem; these were classified by Diophantus, and eventually this led Fermat to conjecture his Last Theorem. The text shows how much of modern algebra arose in attempts to prove this; it also shows how other important themes in algebra arose from questions related to teaching. Indeed, modern algebra is a very useful tool for teachers, with deep connections to the actual content of high school mathematics, as well as to the mathematics teachers use in their profession that doesn't necessarily “end up on the blackboard." The focus is on number theory, polynomials, and commutative rings. Group theory is introduced near the end of the text to explain why generalizations of the quadratic formula do not exist for polynomials of high degree, allowing the reader to appreciate the more general work of Galois and Abel on roots of polynomials. Results and proofs are motivated with specific examples whenever possible, so that abstractions emerge from concrete experience. Applications range from the theory of repeating decimals to the use of imaginary quadratic fields to construct problems with rational solutions. While such applications are integrated throughout, each chapter also contains a section giving explicit connections between the content of the chapter and high school teaching.

Al Cuoco

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