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When I was a senior in high school taking calculus, my teacher assigned us the book Zero: Biography of a dangerous Idea by Charles Seife. I found it inspiring to learn about the class in a historical context. I'd like to incorporate similar readings in classes I teach now (undergraduate liberal arts college).

That being said, I don't exactly remember how we were expected to engage with the text, and I have a feeling that what contemporary students need now is different than what we were assigned at the rather traditionalist high school I attended.

What sorts of assignments, projects, etc. could be used to encourage students to engage with a chapter or reasonable portion of a popular math book that accompanies their course of study, and use the course content to inform their engagement?

Note: I'm not asking for a list of books (I have a large collection of popular math books)!

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  • $\begingroup$ You could also try videos. There are lots of authors that do suitable content; just to name a few fromYouTube, 3Blue1Brown, Veritasium, Numberphile, and Vihart come to mind as excellent. If you think assigning problems is a potential issue, you could ask for a one-paragraph summary and grade it as completed or not. $\endgroup$
    – Jim Hefferon
    Commented Jul 1 at 17:00
  • $\begingroup$ I think that videos and completion assignments, which I would have been fine with at an institution where my teaching effort was less valued, don't engender the level of deep engagement that I'm hoping to encourage from this type of assignment. $\endgroup$
    – Opal E
    Commented Jul 2 at 16:11

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I think each book will call for different approaches.

I'll use Measurement, by Paul Lockhart, as an example. (It is such a cool book, and it does go well with calculus.) For that one, I'd ask students to try at least one (or at least x) problem(s) in each chapter, and then show the work they did. Or you could list the problems from one chapter, and get students to sign up in pairs or groups of 3 for each one, and have them show their own work, and then discuss in groups, and maybe present, explaining where they got stuck, how they got unstuck, and what they like about the problem.

Another favorite of mine that goes with calculus is The Archimedes Codex, by Reviel Netz and William Noel. I'd have a much harder time figuring out activities to go with that one. And it's hard to get students to read whole books these days (or so I hear). So it might only work as extra credit.

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    $\begingroup$ I have been trying for two years to get my chair to let me teach a calculus-for-non-STEM folk out of Lockhart's book. I think I'm close... I have also been working with our ed people to design a course for elementary ed teachers which uses Arithmetic (also Lockhart). Pretty much anything Lockhart is great. $\endgroup$
    – Xander Henderson ♦
    Commented Jul 3 at 11:48
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I agree with Sue that each book might require different approaches. I use Proofs and Refutations by Imre Lakatos when introducing 3D polyhedra and Euler's $V-E+F=2$ formula.

Lakatos cover

See my reply to the post Utillizing Lakatos' "Proofs and Refutations" in Secondary Education.

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