| Description: |
Number theory is a subject that has interested people for thousand of years. This course is a one-semester long graduate course on number theory. Topics to be covered include divisibility and factorization, linear Diophantine equations, congruences, applications of congruences, solving linear congruences, primes of special forms, the Chinese Remainder Theorem, multiplicative orders, the Euler function, primitive roots, quadratic congruences, representation problems and continued fractions. There are no specific prerequisites beyond basic algebra and some ability in reading and writing mathematical proofs. The method of presentation in this course is quite different. Rather than simply presenting the material, students first work to discover many of the important concepts and theorems themselves. After reading a brief introductory material on a particular subject, students work through electronic materials that contain additional background, exercises, and Research Questions, using Java applets. The research questions are typically more open ended and require students to respond with a conjecture and proof. We then present the theory of the material which the students have worked on, along with the proofs. The homework problems contain both computational problems and questions requiring proofs. It is hoped that students, through this course, not only learn the material, learn how to write the proofs, but also gain valuable insight into some of the realities of mathematical research by developing the subject matter on their own. |