Reflection Assignments

Here are some reflective assignments (in addition the Weekly Reflection form). These should be submitted via Gradescope.

But why?!? You might not have been expecting this kind of writing in a math class. One reason that I’m having you do this is just that I would like to get to know your relationship with math. Another reason is that there’s research in pedagogy suggesting that reflecting on your experiences and molding a coherent narrative out of your reflections can be very beneficial to the learning process.

Grading. I do want to be able to understand what you’ve written, but I won’t be marking you off for your spelling or grammar or anything of the sort. All I’m looking for is evidence of genuine reflection and visible effort into organizing your thoughts on paper.

Mathematical Autobiography

Overview. Write a mathematical autobiography (at least 500 words). You’re welcome to take this in any direction you like, but if you’re having trouble getting started, here are some questions you might ponder.

• What early experiences do you remember having related to math?
• What are some memorable (both good and bad) experiences you’ve had with math?
• Have you had any mathematical mentors who weren’t teachers in a classroom setting (eg, parents, siblings, friends)?
• How has your attitude towards math changed over the years?
• What is something that feels good and/or exciting about learning math? What do you find scary about it?
• How does this particular math class, and math as a whole, fit into your goals in life?
• Do you think there’s a difference between how people would react to someone saying “I hate math” versus to someone saying “I hate music”? If so, why do you think that is?
• Have you noticed any differences in attitudes towards math between here and wherever you grew up?
• What do you think mathematics is? How would you define it for an alien who is trying to understand what kinds of things human beings think about and how mathematics fits into the landscape of human inquiry?

Note. I plan go through the autobiographies and collect similar excerpts from your autobiographies that I find interesting. I’ll then post related sets of excerpts to Discord every few days and ask everyone to reflect collectively on these excerpts. (I’ll make sure to thoroughly anonymize these excerpts so that there is essentially no identifying information there!) If you like, responding to these autobiography-related topics on Discord can take the place of your usual reading-assignment-related Discord participation.

Final Reflection

Write up responses for each of the following (roughly 200-300 words each).

1. Interpretting statistics. In your own words, summarize the contents of WL16 and AGM19.

2. Creativity. Give an example of an idea from this class that you found creative (or just “cool”), and explain what you find creative about it. Explain the idea briefly as you would explain it to someone who hasn’t taken any statistics before. You could describe a particular technique that you learned that you found to be creative, or you could describe an instance of creativity you experienced in your own problem-solving (or someone else’s).

3. Meta-learning. This block, you were asked to fill out weekly forms in which you reflected on your (mathematical) learning habits. In these forms, you told me about what you were doing to learn things, what you weren’t doing, what you were hoping to change about your learning habits, etc. Describe one thing you learned about your learning habits this block. Did you discover that you weren’t doing something that maybe you should have been doing, or that you were doing something that you shouldn’t have been doing? If you set a goal for yourself to change one of your learning habits and followed through on it, what did you find?

4. Persistence. Take one specific problem you worked on this block that you struggled to understand and solve, and explain how the struggle itself was valuable. In the context of this question, describe the struggle and how you overcame it. Did you have a “eureka!” moment, and if so, what seemed to bring it about? You might also discuss whether struggling built aspects of character in you (endurance, self-confidence, growth mindset, etc). How might these virtues might benefit you in later ventures?