General Resources - UNIV 103 - Culture, Science and Mathematics in the Pre-Columbian Americas - LibGuides at Millersville University of Pennsylvania

Evaluating Information

Evaluating Information - Applying the CRAAP Test
The CRAAP Test is a list of questions to help you evaluate the information you find. Different criteria will be more or less important depending on your situation or need.

Regardless of where you are getting your information, you need to be aware of a few simple attributes about whatever information you are using.

When evaluating information, here are five helpful considerations:

Currency: timeliness of the information.

Relevance: importance of the information for your need.

Authority: source of the information.

Accuracy: reliability, truthfulness, correctness.

Purpose: reason that the information exists.

Thinking Critically About World Wide Web Resources

Getting Started / Basic Overviews

MathWorld
A comprehensive and interactive mathematics encyclopedia intended for students, educators, math enthusiasts, and researchers.
MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
Sponsored by the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of St Andrews Scotland. The presentation includes indexes to biographical and historical mathematical information, in addition to quotes, medals, societies, etc. about mathematics. Includes citations to additional material.
Access Science
AccessScience synthesizes vast amounts of information, and organizes it to give you fast, easy and accurate access to authoritative articles in all major areas of science and technology. More than 8500 scientific topics are explained, 110,000 terms defined, using more than 15,000 diagrams and graphics to explain ideas and topics. Continuously updated including the latest terms, images and videos.
Encyclopedia of Mathematics & Society
The Encyclopedia of Mathematics and Society is designed to provide students at the high school and under-graduate levels with a convenient source of information on the fundamental science and the mathematics behind our daily lives, explaining to students how and why mathematics works, and allowing readers to better understand how disciplines such as algebra, geometry, calculus, and others affect what we do every day.

Library Search ( nearly everything )

Finding Articles

Academic Search Ultimate (previously Complete)
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Full-text access to thousands of popular and scholarly sources. A "goto" database for any subject.
MathSciNet (via American Mathematical Society)
MathSciNet offers access to a database of reviews, abstracts and bibliographic information for much of the mathematical sciences literature. Over 100,000 new items are added each year, most of them classified according to the Mathematics Subject Classification.
MathSciNet (via EBSCOhost)
MathSciNet offers access to a database of reviews, abstracts and bibliographic information for much of the mathematical sciences literature. Over 100,000 new items are added each year, most of them classified according to the Mathematics Subject Classification.

Finding Books

Request It (E-ZBorrow)
The fastest way to get a book that Millersville does not have. Items usually arrive within 4 business days at the library circulation desk in McNairy Library.

Additional Resources

ARTstor
ARTstor is the ultimate image collection, containing hundreds of thousands of images covering art, architecture, archeology, and history. Useful for research not only in the arts, but in social history, sociology, and history.

MLA Citation Style

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers

MLA handbook, Eighth edition, The Modern Language Association of America, 2016.
Contains guidelines for doing research, giving citations, and preparing bibliographies.
Location: Reserve - Permanent LB2369 .G53 2016 ( at Reserves behind circulation desk )

The MLA Style Center

MLA Formatting and Style Guide ( OWL at Purdue )

Mathematical Movies

Flatland by Jeffrey Travis (Directed By); Seth Caplan (Produced by)
ISBN: 9781467536288
Flatland is a world that exists entirely on a two-dimensional plane. All different kinds of shapes live, work and play in this world. The story follows Arthur Square and his curious granddaughter Hex. When a mysterious visitor arrives from Spaceland, Arthur and Hex must come to terms with the truth of the third dimension, risking dire consequences from the evil Circles that have ruled Flatland for thousands of years.
Donald in Mathmagic Land
ISBN: B00287Z1F2
Publication Date: 1959, 2004
An animated classic starring Donald Duck.

Donald Duck gets a lesson in math appreciation when he is shown the relevance of math in everyday life. Donald wanders into a mysterious land filled with numbers, shapes, and peculiar symbols. "The Spirit of Adventure" (narrator) informs the skeptical duck that he is about to embark on a journey through the wonderland of mathematics. Donald is whisked back to ancient Greece to meet Pythagoras, the father of math and music. After eavesdropping on a secret meeting of Pythagoreans and turning their serene musical trio into a riotous quartet, Donald continues on his journey. He takes on numerous roles, including art critic, nature observer, billiards player, baseball player, and even Lewis Carroll’s Alice. Through his adventures in Mathmagic Land, Donald comes to appreciate how measurements, calculations, shapes, and ratios contribute to music, architecture and art, nature, games, and inventions of all kinds, as well as the role of math in the future.
Zero to Infinity
ISBN: 9781598033762
Part 1.
Lecture 1. The ever-evolving notion of number
Lecture 2. The dawn of numbers
Lecture 3. Speaking the language of numbers
Lecture 4. The dramatic digits, the power of zero
Lecture 5. The magical and spiritual allure of numbers
Lecture 6. Nature’s numbers, patterns without people
Lecture 7. Numbers of prime importance
Lecture 8. Challenging the rationality of numbers
Lecture 9. Walk the (number) line
Lecture 10. The commonplace chaos among real numbers
Lecture 11. A beautiful dusting of zeroes and twos
Lecture 12. An intuitive sojourn into arithmetic
Part 2.
Lecture 13. The story of [pi]
Lecture 14. The story of Euler’s e
Lecture 15. Transcendental numbers
Lecture 16. An algebraic approach to numbers
Lecture 17. The five most important numbers
Lecture 18. An analytic approach to numbers
Lecture 19. A new breed of numbers
Lecture 20. The notion of transfinite numbers
Lecture 21. Collections too infinite to count
Lecture 22. In and out, the road to a third infinity
Lecture 23. Infinity, what we know and what we don’t
Lecture 24. The endless frontier of number.
The Story of 1
A humor-inflected history of the of the number one, covering military applications in ancient Rome, the measurement of distances in India, and the decimal system created by Leibnitz.

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UNIV 103 - Culture, Science and Mathematics in the Pre-Columbian Americas: General Resources