A few days ago my sister Anita sent me one of the Great Courses, a series put out by The Teaching Company and featuring courses of all kinds of academic subjects. You can check out many of them from the public library...the one I received is called The Joy of Mathematics and consists of 24 lessons on 4 DVDs along with an accompanying book duplicating each lesson. The lecturer is Arthur T. Benjamin, a professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd College (or at least he was in 2007 when this course came out) as well as being a renowned popularizer of this often arcane and difficult field. I've gone through the first six lessons and have thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Benjamin's enthusiasm, sense of humor and clarity as he explains various mathematical concepts...I do a lesson a day. Below is a list of the course's lessons, omitting the words "The Joy of" that precede each of them:
1 Math-The Big Picture
2 Numbers
3 Primes
4 Counting
5 Fibonacci Numbers
6 Algebra
7 Higher Algebra
8 Algebra Made Visual
9 "9"
10 Proofs
11 Geometry
12 Pi
13 Trigonometry
14 The Imaginary Number i
15 The Number e
16 Infinity
17 Infinite Series
18 Differential Calculus
19 Approximating with Calculus
20 Integral Calculus
21 Pascal's Triangle
22 Probability
23 Mathematical Games
24 Mathematical Magic
In the lessons I've covered so far, Dr. Benjamin has woven the discovery of patterns and their establishment by mathematical proofs through the material and has made much clearer concepts that I only fleetingly understood when taking various math courses earlier in school. He also demonstrates some pretty nifty shortcuts...and then explains why they work. This "Great" course is definitely worth going back to, and it makes me want to check out other courses in their catalogue...
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