How to think like a mathematician?

Stanford University is offering an online course called "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking". The 10-week-long course will begin on February 3rd 2014.

About the Course:

Note: For the Winter 2014 session, the course website will go live at 10:00 AM US-PST on Saturday February 1. Two days before the course begins, you will have time to familiarise yourself with the website structure, watch some short introductory videos, and look at some preliminary material.

The goal of the course is to help you develop a valuable mental ability - a powerful way of thinking that our ancestors have developed over three thousand years.

Mathematical thinking is not the same as doing mathematics - at least not as how mathematics is typically presented in our school system. School math typically focuses on learning procedures to solve highly stereotyped problems. Professional mathematicians think in a certain way to solve real problems, problems that can arise from the everyday world, or from science, or from within mathematics itself. The key to success in school math is to learn to think inside-the-box. In contrast, a key feature of mathematical thinking is thinking outside-the-box - a valuable ability in today's world. This course helps to develop that crucial way of thinking.

The course is offered in two versions. The eight-week-long Basic Course is designed for people who want to develop or improve mathematics-based, analytic thinking for professional or general life purposes. The ten-week-long Extended Course is aimed primarily at first-year students at college or university who are thinking of majoring in mathematics or a mathematically-dependent subject, or high school seniors who have such a college career in mind. The final two weeks are more intensive and require more mathematical background than the Basic Course. There is no need to make a formal election between the two. Simply skip or drop out of the final two weeks if you decide you want to complete only the Basic Course.

Keith Devlin will be the course instructor.

The course workload is 8-10 hours of work / week.

It will be taught in English and the subtitles will be in English and Portuguese.

To apply and to get more details on the same click here