Select and present your discussion or solution to one exercise/investigation from any of the assignments that meet each of the following criteria:
A. You felt you learned the most mathematics...Why?
B. You felt most satisfied/happy about...Why?
C. You felt shows your best effort during the quarter.
D. You felt that your doing the exploration/problem opened up new mathematics for you..Why?
Each assignment this quarter opened up new mathematics for me. Although I had a basis for each of the assignments, my mathmatics knowledge was tested, extended, and enhanced. It is easy to say that the geometry in the course helped to build a better foundation than when I started.
It is difficult to pick one assignment that fulfills each of the aforementioned criteria. In some assignments, I felt that my mathematics was strong, yet my communication might have been weak. In some assignments, the opposite may have been true.
The assignment I chose to discuss is Assignment 9. This assignment dealt with pedal triangles. I focused on the exercise that explored the locus of the midpoints of the pedal triangle as it followed along the path of the excircle.
One of the reasons that I chose this assignment to highlight is that I did not know anything about pedal triangles or what an excircle of a triangle was before this quarter. I also was able to make some conjectures about the foci of the ellipses that are created by the midpoints of the pedal triangle. I feel that some more investigation into the problem would have given me more than a conjecture and I would have been able to support the relationships I found.
I felt that this assignment was also communicated well. It begins with a discussion of pedal triangles and takes the reader through the investigation to the final goal. It is concise and clearly worded. I also believe that by this time in the quarter I felt good about the use of the technology and I was able to implement it where necessary.
Go to Assignment 9 - Pedal Triangles
