# Essays for Math 311w, Reluga

## Assignments

• Prompt 1, Week 3: Euclid’s Book 7 propositions, due Friday, September 14th.

• Prompt 2, November 7, due Friday, November 16th in class (or earlier if you are leaving town). See your email for instructions.

## Essay rules

The essays are not to exceed 3 pages of text. These essays will be assigned by email, and will be due in class one week from the day assigned. Essays must be typed and handed in in both physical and electronic forms. See your email for details.

## Guides and Checklist

Before you start writing your first essay, you may want to read a little of A guide to writing mathematics by Kevin Lee. Keep it as a handy reference.

• Always include your name, the course section, the date, and title on a cover page.

• Are the grammar and spelling correct?

• Have you used mathematics vocabulary correctly? Symbols, also. Choose symbols that are short and easy to remember. When writing math, ’*’ is the symbol for the calculus convolution operation, while $$\times$$ or $$\cdot$$ or no symbol at all are used for multiplication. Numbering your equations will make them easier to reference in your essay when you need to. For example, “Notice that the integral in Equation 3 is not calculable in close form.”

• Have you defined any new terminology that would be unfamiliar at this point to your classmate?

• Have you wasted space repeating or redefining ideas that we already know about?

• Have you cited sources appropriately in the body of your essay as needed? (Whenever you reference a piece of specialized knowledge in your essay, you should include a citation referencing the appropriate bibliographic entry.) Use author-year style citations and bibliographic entries as described in the Chicago Manual of Style.

• Have you included a bibliography referencing any sources you have used in your essay? See the Chicago Manual of Style for specifics.

• Have you plagiarized? Don’t. Say everything in your own words, or make sure the text is clearly marked as a quote with a source included. It is amazingly easy these days to check. Even phrases as short and inocuous as “He mechanically set about making the preparations” are enough to uniquely identify a classic adventure novel.

• Has your writing clearly demonstrated your own understanding of the mathematics under study?

• Have you double-checked any calculations to make sure you haven’t made any mistakes?

• Do not add any extra lines, borders or “fancy” decoration to the paper. It will distract from the contant, which is what I (we) are interested in.

• Don’t use ridiculously large margins, fonts, or line spacings. Fonts should be 9-12 pt, margins should be between 1 and 2 inches on 8.5 x 11 paper.

• Have you indented equations that appear on a line by themselves? Equation labels or numbers should be right-justified.

• Have labelled any figures clearly and referenced those labels where needed in your text?

• Don’t fill your essay with hog-wash. Stay on-topic, and when you’re done saying what you have to say, stop writing.