Class Schedule for Winter 2021

The course begins with a development of deductive reasoning and validity of arguments. The reasoning skills are built as the topics move into basic set knowledge and operations. These ideas of set properties are expanded as counting (combinatorics) is covered in many settings. Combinatorics comes in extremely handy for counting the number of ways certain events will occur, which leads right into the next topic - probability. Probability starts with basic knowledge and builds into ideas like conditional probability, expected value, independence, and may include some applications into medical testing. Once the idea of chance is explored, statistics look at probability distributions - mainly focusing on the normal distribution and applications of it. There are some extensions into inferential statistics with margin of error and possibly confidence intervals and/or introductory hypothesis testing.

These topics fit in nicely with extensions into gambling probabilities and links to casino games. Looking at statistics on expected value and variance may help illustrate why it is possible to win at casinos, but highly unlikely in most games (the profit made by casinos is a major reason they are so beautiful). The logic is a theme throughout and formulas and memorization are not emphasized; the goal of the course is to begin to think and reason mathematically in many areas. Algebra and algebraic properties are extremely helpful and it is strongly advised that students have recently taken Math 095 Intermediate Algebra or an equivalent. A readiness quiz may be given the first week to determine your knowledge of the prerequisites and your math preparedness for the course.

This course is in the Math 105-106-107 sequence, and will fulfill the Bachelor of Science requirements (or possibly science group requirements), but the courses are not built upon one another and may be taken out of order. Math 106 is strongly encouraged to be taken after Math 105 because of the finance implications.