What is the SUMaC teaching philosophy?
The SUMaC program engages students by introducing the course material through problems that are of historical significance, that are important to the development of mathematics, that have applications to current lines of research in mathematics and the sciences, and that will be found interesting by students who enjoy mathematics. Additionally, the view is that one learns mathematics by doing mathematics– by working on, tackling, and (hopefully) solving interesting and challenging problems. The SUMaC program gives participants a variety of problems at different levels of abstraction, starting with problems that are relatively concrete and to some extent familiar. These initial problems are used to develop basic intuitions about a particular topic, as well as to strengthen general mathematics skills. Often these problems are followed by a series of more probing ones which dig successively deeper into the abstract, attempting to both fine-tune and generalize one’s intuitions and knowled
