I offer these notes to anyone who is using this textbook, in the hope that they will be helpful. I am delighted that others are finding these notes helpful - so if you find them helpful, let me know! Here's what one happy reader said: "I have been using your notes (for circular permutations [lesson 55] they were a big help). We live in a remote area of Florida and I don't know any others in this area that are working on Advanced Math." [MFurey].
Sadly, if you're not in my class (or at least SGC), please don't send me math questions - I'd like to help, but I simply can't answer math questions sent from everyone in the world (sorry!). The co-op is a service provided by SGC to Sovereign Grace members; Sovereign Grace Church (SGC) Home Ed Blog (HEA) and HEA Blog co-op documents have the latest info.
A word about data formats: I normally edit my class notes in OpenDocument format (ODF), which is the international open standard for office documents (ISO/IEC 26300:2006). Files ending in ".odt" are OpenDocument text (e.g., word processing format). There are many programs that can read and write this format; a good one that's free is OpenOffice.org, which is available for MS Windows, Apple Macintosh, Linuxes, *BSDs, and Unix. If you just want to read the notes, you can read the PDF version (PDF is also internationally standardized); there are lots of PDF readers, many free. As a general rule I strongly encourage the use of open data standards (formats that aren't controlled by any one vendor), such as ODF, PDF, and HTML. I also use the international standard format for dates (ISO 8601), YYYY-MM-DD, which helps to avoid confusion in international communication - and it sorts well too.
Syllabus 2010-2011 [PDF] | Syllabus 2010-2011 [ODF] (It hasn't changed)
Calendar 2011-2012 [PDF] | Calendar 2011-2012 [ODT] |
Mathematics: What & Why [PDF] | Mathematics: What & Why [ODF] (What Math? is a nice additional essay.)
Show your work (William Mulholland): [PDF] | [ODF]
Notes on Lessons (latest versions):
I typically have notes on the lessons ready the night before, and make minor revisions within the day after class (based on comments during class).
Turn in tests on Sunday in the "HEA Tests" mailbox (lower rightmost box); mailboxes are in the foyer behind the information desk. Parents: Please do a preliminary grading; put a big "check" or "elongated C" (correct) mark by the correct ones, and a big "X" by the incorrect ones. That way, I can concentrate on figuring out partial credit, and you can have immediate information on how well they're doing. Here are some test-taking tips:
After this class, you may be able to answer some of the challenges on this page.
Related - here's a quick cheatsheet on Negative numbers (PDF) | Negative numbers (ODT). If you need this, you shouldn't be in the Advanced Math class - I created this for a junior high school student.
Algebra II is the leading predictor of college and work success.
Legal stuff: The Saxon book is copyrighted, so I cannot post extensive portions of the book. To avoid running afoul of copyright law, I create my own explanations and examples - which means these notes are my own copyrighted work, and are not a derivative of Saxon's work. Having things explained in a different way, with different examples, is better for teaching anyway (because it gives my students more examples to learn from). I do use the same order of instruction as Saxon's book - I don't see how I could avoid doing so while using Saxon as the textbook! I believe this is de minimus (so small as to not matter), but even if it isn't, this use of Saxon's outline is clearly fair use. After all, it is for the purpose of teaching, it's for nonprofit educational purposes, it's clearly transformative (I create new examples and explain things differently instead of just posting the outline), it emphasizes mathematical facts (which cannot be copyrighted), its content is quite different from Saxon's (it merely follows the same order), and it does not diminish Saxon's potential market (if anything, it increases it). Fair use is a critically important part of U.S. law.
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