We will spend about a week on each chapter of Common Sense Mathematics .

Introductions. What this course isn't. Fermi problems (Chapter 1) - numbers in the news, estimations, orders of magnitude. Quick and dirty arithmetic.

Fermi problems. Questions about the first homework.

Note: add/drop ends today.

Numbers come with units. We've seen that when looking at Fermi problems, now we pay more particular attention. (Chapter 2).

Units.

In principle, studying percentages (Chapter 3) is just a review of material learned in elementary school. In practice, most students need work here. We introduce some new methods that should help.

Percentages. A little bit about inflation (Chapter 4).

Averages (Chapter 5). More than you learned in high school, and more interesting too.

EXAM 1 covering all the material to date - in principle, Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 5, but possibly less if we haven't moved quite as fast as planned.

Chapter 6: Income Distribution. Introducing Excel! Median.

Charts (in Excel).

Still in Chapter 6. Histograms, percentiles.

Electricity bills. Linear functions. (Chapter 7)

Linear functions.

Regression (Chapter 8).

EXAM 2

Exponential growth (Chapter 9)

Credit cards and mortgages (Chapter 10)

Probability - Chapter 11. The house advantage in several contexts: lotteries, roulette, insurance.

Thanksgiving

Chapter 12: Events that happen rarely - instincts often fail!

False positives (Chapter 13). This is really cool surprising stuff that makes a good finish.

Last class

Write the final exam.