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About the Program Mathematicians describe the objects they study as abstract and as formal, as complex and as imaginary, as transfinite, as transcendental, or as irrational. They also describe them as real, absolute, simple, natural, and constructive. Mathematicians study some of the most etheral creations of the human spirit. It is also a craft that forms the basis of our understanding of the structure of the physical cosmos, the behavior of our devices, and the flow of resources in human economies. It is a tough, precise, engineering tool; it is also the most exquisite of human arts.
At Earlham, bringing students into contact with the science, the craft and the art of mathematics is central to the mission of the Mathematics Departmant. Earlham students of Mathematics are members of a community with a human scale. An introductory calculus or statistics class might have 15 to 35 students; advanced classes might have 5 to 10. We graduate about five Math majors a year, historically slightly more women than men. Earlham Math students practice mathematics as a craft with both individual and social dimensions. Skills we value include reading, writing and discussing technical material; communicating quantitative ideas to audiences with varying degrees of mathematical background; and learning or discovering new mathematics both independently and collaboratively. Studying mathematics requires having the courage to guess and to generalize, to speculate and to create. The Earlham Mathematics Department strives to be a challenging, yet supportive, community that nourishes students' courage to discover. Collaboration across disciplinary boundaries is respected and encouraged. The combination of ideas and techniques from multiple fiels has always strengthened students' understanding of the place of mathematics as a tool in other disciplines, and of the place of other disciplines as sources of problems and ideas for mathematicians. Earlham's liberal arts tradition excels at encouraging a breadth of investigation and showing how breadth can also lead to depth. |
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Earlham College · 801 National Road West · Richmond,
Indiana 47374-4095 |