Welcome to MAT110/MAT110E! You should be enrolled in MAT110 if you have a 22 or higher on the ACT or passed the math placement exam (MPE) with a 70 or higher. Otherwise, you should be enrolled in MAT110E and MAT099. Keep in mind that if you fail MAT099, you will fail MAT110E as well, regardless of your exam and homework scores in MAT110E. Hence, it is imperative that you attend and actively participate in your MAT099 section.
We will be kicking off the semester this week with an introduction to graph theory. A graph is a collection of vertices (think dots) and edges (think lines) between the vertices. We can use graphs to study many things in the world around us. For example, a graph can represent streets and intersections from a map (see The Traveling Salesperson Problem), computer networks, social networks, or even be used to study DNA (see A Graph Theoretical Approach to DNA Fragment Assembly). By the end of this week, you should know what a graph is and be able to describe several properties of a graph.
A little bit about me: I am in my fourth year as an Assistant Professor of mathematics here at Missouri Western State University. Before coming to MWSU, I spent a year as a visiting assistant professor at Ashland University. I received my PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2011. (Go Big Red!) My husband is also a mathematician at William Jewell College. We have a 22-month old daughter who is a bundle of energy and absorbs all our free time and we are expecting a baby boy this April. This summer we took our daughter hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains where she hiked a mile on her own and got to see a black bear.
Please ask for help as soon as you are having trouble with this class. You can visit me in my office (Agenstein 135K). Peer tutoring is also available (for free) through the Center for Academic Support.
Challenge Problem #1: Sketch several examples of graphs. Determine the degree of the vertices in each graph. When you add the degrees of all the vertices, you will always get an even number. Why is that?
This is because, all vertices equals twice the number of edges.
ReplyDeleteOctavia, Your solution to the challenge problem should be posted on your blog. Can you explain why the sum of the vertices is twice the number of edges?
ReplyDelete