Virginia Commonwealth University

VCU Honors College


Module information

Think Like a Mathematician
Instructor: Larson, Craig

HONR 399 702
Time: TR 4-5:15

Think like a Mathematician: Conjecturing, Proving, and Finding Counterexamples In this seminar we will experience the practice of mathematics: we will dive into the unknown and see what we can discover. Mathematics involves making guesses (conjecturing), proving things (theorem proving) and finding examples that show that our initial guesses are wrong (finding counterexamples). The mathematics we will see is Graph Theory. These "graphs" are "dots and lines" - not the graphs you remember from high school. These graphs can be used to represent the World Wide Web, molecular structure, social networks and many other things, and their study is of central importance. The course will be hands-on. We will use the Grinvin conjecture-making program and meet in one of the computer labs. There are no prerequisites - other than a love for exploration.