assignments

• Map 1 (Hometown) 5%
• Math 1 10%
• Longitude Assign. 5%
• Maps 2 (Choropleth) 5%
• Maps 3 (Isopleth) 5%
• Writing 1 (Map Analysis)10%
• Final Hist Essay 15%
• Final Map Project 25%
• Participation 20%

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

• 0. Write a paragraph or two about your most positive mathematical experience (and interpret "mathematical" broadly, not necessarily limited to a math classroom).

• 1. Imagine a city with a grid system where streets run north-south and avenues run east-west. Each block is a square, 100 yards on each side. You are at the junction of 3rd Street and 7th Avenue and your favourite restaurant is at the junction of 6th Street and 11th Avenue. How far do you have to walk to get there along the roads? What's the straight-line distance you would have to travel if you had a jet-pack? (You can assume the city is flat and that the curvature of the Earth can be ignored for this question.)

• 2. Find the distance from your hometown to Marlboro College in as many different ways as you can (assuming the earth is flat, with the haversine/cosine approach, asking Google...). Talk about how much they differ and why.

• 3. In class we saw a triangle on a sphere whose angles add up to \(270^\circ\). Is that the largest possible? If not, what's the largest you can find? If so, can you give a convincing argument for /why/?

• 4. Our bear in class walked 20 miles south, 20 miles east and then 20 miles north to get back to where it started at the north pole. This is not the only possible starting point for such a journey. Can you find another? Can you find all of them (and give a convincing argument why you've found them all)?

• 5. Investigate spherical trigonometry and how it relates to plane trigonometry. Can you deduce some of the spherical distance rules from the plane trig ones? Areas of triangles on spheres are something else worth investigating. Google and/or Wikipedia are probably good starting points, or talk to Matt.

• 6. If you know the latitude and longitude of a place on Earth, how do you find the latitude and longitude of the point exactly opposite it on the other side of the world? What is at the point on Earth furthest from your home town?

• 7. Given any two points that are /not/ exactly opposite each other, the shortest distance between them lies along a unique straight line (as you'd probably expect) that can be extended to a "great circle". Can you see why that is a reasonable name for it? Using a globe (easiest) or a map (trickier, depending on the projection---more on this to come) trace out the great circle that both your home town and Marlboro College lie on. If you were to do a round-the-world trip on that great circle where would you go and what would you see?

Assignment 3

• Gnomon experiment, as explained in class and on the syllabus page.

Assignment 4

Assignment 5

• Pick a map that we have not looked at extensively in class. Two main directions are a) historical map and b) contemporary map. For a) you should address what's the map of, what tradition does it fit into, what can you learn about the designers of the map (map of historical source). you could choose one particular element of a map and talk about what that says about some bigger issue (see the islands reading as an option. For b) write in terms of similar question: what are the map-makers trying to show. For modern maps you can think in Monmonier's terms---what choices were made and why? (These are not radically different to each other.)

Assignment 6