Instructions for the Final Exam in MATH 306 -- History and Philosophy
of Mathematics
The exam will be split into two parts:
Part I:
It is a short answer take-home exam of elementary historical names and
dates. You should either print out a copy for yourself or pick one up
from the folder in front of my door. You must turn it in at the
beginning of the in-class portion of the exam. It is worth 25% of the
exam. You may not discuss it with any other person.
Part II:
This will be in-class at the designated time. It will be approximately
1.5 hours long. It is open book and open note. You can and should
bring a calculator. It will be comprehensive. Recall that we had three
exams that split the semester in to four approximately equal segments.
Each of these four segments will be weighted about equally. There will
be a couple of historical questions, but of course, you will have
access to your text.
Important Topics Since Exam III
Chapter 9: Probability
Pascal's Triangle
Induction
Elementary discrete probability including independent events, mutually
exclusive events, expected value, the notion of a fair game
Chapter 10: Number Theory
perfect numbers
Mersenne primes
amicable numbers
Fermat's Last Theorem
Fermat's Little Theorem
Congruence Theory
Chapter 11: Nineteenth-Century Contributions: Lobachevsky to Hilbert
The end of the story of Euclid's fifth axiom, including a long list of
other properties equivalent to it
Saccheri quadrilaterals
Lambert quadrilaterals
Hyperbolic geometry
Elliptic geometry