October 14, 2007
MA290
I've recently completed my first Open University course: MA20 Topics in the History of Mathematics. I remember watching some of the TV programmes for this—which are supplied on DVD these days—when I was a kid. I had already picked up the course book—The history of mathematics: a reader eds. John Fauvel and Jeremy Gray— a number of years ago in a book sale, and so when I found at that this was the last year that the course was running I really had to sign up.
I found doing the assignments (TMAs) an interesting experience. I've always found writing—even short things—a fairly painful process. Here the problem was compounded rather by the assignments having word limits. However, there were points where I thought I was getting the hang of it, and I started to get a sense of the meaning of the word ‘copy’ as a mass noun: not to do with quantity of words so much as a certain detachment, slabs of verbiage to be shoved around.
I'm going to put up my TMA answers here, as I want to mull over a couple of them some more.
Posted by robin2 at October 14, 2007 05:38 PM