Presentation Guidelines for MATH 2301 Section 172 (Barsamian)

In MATH 2301 Section 172 and its associated Recitation Sections 173, 174, 175, 175, Student Presentations will be an integral part of the meetngs. Most of the Presentations will be of the following type:

• Before the meeting, the student prepares (on paper) a solution to a problem. Their name is not written on their solution.
• In the meeting, the student presents their solution, using the document camera. The class will discuss the solution, and Mark may make written comments on the students' written solution. Mark may also write his own solution to the same problem on a separate sheet of paper.
• After the meeting, Mark will scan the student's solution with the comments on it (and Mark's solution, if he wrote one) and post the solution on the course web page.

For this system to work, please follow the following Presentation Guidelines.

• Write on standard \( 8.5 \times 11 \) printer paper. This makes Mark's job of scanning the solutions much easier.
• Don't write your name on your solution. The scanned solutions are going to be posted on the web.
• Write large and clear, so that the document will project well when viewed using the Document Camera. (You are not writing for a Homework or Quiz or Exam. You're writing for a Presentation.)
• Write the problem that is going to be presented at the top of the page. You don't want the reader to wonder what the presentation is about.
• Be mindful to use an appropriate level of detail. This takes some skill, and it is a skill that needs to be practiced. That's why we're doing this. For example, if part of your presentation involves solving an equation for some variable, then it is best to present the equation clearly, and then write that the equation is going to be solved for some variable, and then write the result. You don't want to bog down a presentation by including the steps of a solving an equation. There are always exceptions to this, of course. If there is something unusual about one of the steps in the solving, then of course you will want to write about that.
• Include headings in your written solution, headings that say what you're going to do in the next section of the solution. This takes some skill, and it is a skill that needs to be practiced. Again, that's why we're doing this.
• Your steps should be clear, with correct notation and explanations, especially for important steps.
• Style advice:
  • Work down the page. Don't work in columns.
  • Quantities that are equal should be related with equal signs. But equal signs should not be used between quantities or expressions that are not actually equal.
  • If you finish the calculation of some quantity, or the rewriting of some expression, and begin calculating a new quantity, do that on the next line. Put another way, a particular line of your solution may have a bunch of expressions that are equal, related by equal signs. And that string of equal expressions may spill over onto the next line, with more equal signs equating the expression on one line of your solution to expressions on the next line of your solution. But a particular line of your solution should usually not have expressions thar are not equal. Start a new line for a new expression. There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes, the whole point of part of your solution is to say that some expression is not equal to some other expression . In that kind of situation, then of course, you might want to display the two expressions on the same line, with a not equal sign between them.
  • If you are asked to include a graph, make your graph large and neat, with important features labeled with their \((x,y)\) coordinates. Title the graph.

page maintained by Mark Barsamian, last updated Sep 1, 2022