Students, if you would like to learn something outside the typical college math canon, come talk to me about a possible independent study course! Here are some reading projects I organized at the University of Oregon if you would like inspiration for possible topics:

• An introduction to projective curves, including the classification of projective conics: selected readings from Miles Reid's Undergraduate Algebraic Geometry. You may have learned how to classify conics (parabolas, ellipses, hyperbolas, etc) in a precalculus class, but what happens if you add in "points at infinity"? It turns out that the classification is simpler (with a little linear algebra) and more beautiful.

• An introduction to elliptic curves: Silverman's Rational Points on Elliptic Curves. An elliptic curve (e.g. the graph of y^2=x^3-x) is at once a geometric object (a curve) and an algebraic object (a group). Moreover, the algebra and geometry are compatible in that the group operations are given by continuous maps. These curves are important objects in modern number theory and in algebraic geometry.

Other courses I taught at Carleton:

• Math 111 (calculus 1)

• Math 120 (calculus 2)

• Math 210 (calculus 3)

• Math 232 (linear algebra)

Courses for which I was instructor of record at the University of Oregon:

• Math 111 (college algebra)

• Math 112 (elementary functions)

• Math 243 (introduction to probability and statistics)

• Math 251 (calculus 1)

• Math 246 (calculus 1 for the biological sciences)

• Math 252 (calculus 2)

• Math 341 (elementary linear algebra)