BSc Mathematics with Placement Year

This unit aims to develop students’ mathematical problem solving and communication skills through a series of group projects and project reports.  Students will work on three group projects covering a range of topics in pure and applied mathematics. These topics will vary from year to year and will not be pre-requisites for any later course units. The topics will be introduced in weekly lectures and developed by group problem solving in weekly workshops. Students will collaborate on the projects but will submit individual reports for each project.  However, this collaboration will be also assessed through a group mark based on the average mark for the members of the group who attend the workshops. 

This unit aims to develop students’ mathematical problem solving and communication skills through a series of group projects and project reports. 

On the successful completion of the course, students will be able to: 

• Collaborate with other students to solve mathematical problems
• Develop and analyse simple mathematical models to investigate real world problems 
• Apply mathematical software to solve mathematical problems 
• Write clear and accurate mathematical reports 
• Deliver a presentation using appropriate media 

Formal feedback is given through the marked projects; informal feedback through discussions with session leaders during the workshops.

Giordano, F, ‘A First Course in Mathematical Modeling’ (Brookes-Cole, 1985) 

Desmond Higham and Nick Higham, ‘MATLAB Guide’ (3rd edition, SIAM, 2017) 

Devlin, K.  ‘Mathematics: The Science of Patterns’ (Scientific American Library, 1997) 

Higham, N. J.  ‘Handbook of writing for the mathematical sciences’ (SIAM, 1993) 

Mason, J.  ‘Thinking Mathematically’ (Addison-Wesley, 1985) 

Griffiths, D. F. and Higham, D. J. ‘Learning LATEX’ (SIAM, 2016)