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PrefacePreface

MATH 203 Contemporary Mathematics is designed for students who are not majoring in mathematics and is intended to serve as a general education math class. The standard high school progression of algebra - geometry - more algebra - precalculus - calculus can leave many students with a distaste for math, partly because it gives the impression that mathematics is all about algebraic manipulations, and partly because it omits many areas of interesting mathematics needed for personal use or informed citizenship. MATH 203 tries to fill those gaps by covering a wide range of mathematical topics, of which algebra is only a small piece. The mathematical content that we hope students will find both interesting and useful has been divided into four units: statistics, social choice (such as voting theory and fair division), growth and finance, and graph theory.

The text is intended to be supplemented for the Math 203 Course Manual available for purchase at the UNL Bookstore.