ii Preface/Acknowledgment
intellectual rapport with the contents. I can only hope that the readers
(if any) can find some something of value by the reading of my stream-
of-consciousness narrative.
The basic layout of my notes originally was constrained to the five
option themes of IB: geometry, discrete mathematics, abstract alge-
bra, series and ordinary differential equations, and inferential statistics.
However, I have since added a short chapter on inequalities and con-
strained extrema as they amplify and extend themes typically visited
in a standard course in Algebra II. As for the IB option themes, my
organization differs substantially from that of the HH text. Theirs is
one in which the chapters are independent of each other, having very
little articulation among the chapters. This makes their text especially
suitable for the teaching of any given option topic within the context
of IB mathematics HL. Mine, on the other hand, tries to bring out
the strong interdependencies among the chapters. For example, the
HH text places the chapter on abstract algebra (Sets, Relations, and
Groups) before discrete mathematics (Number Theory and Graph The-
ory), whereas I feel that the correct sequence is the other way around.
Much of the motivation for abstract algebra can be found in a variety
of topics from both number theory and graph theory. As a result, the
reader will find that my Abstract Algebra chapter draws heavily from
both of these topics for important examples and motivation.
As another important example, HH places Statistics well before Se-
ries and Differential Equations. This can be done, of course (they did
it!), but there’s something missing in inferential statistics (even at the
elementary level) if there isn’t a healthy reliance on analysis. In my or-
ganization, this chapter (the longest one!) is the very last chapter and
immediately follows the chapter on Series and Differential Equations.
This made more natural, for example, an insertion of a theoretical
subsection wherein the density of two independent continuous random
variables is derived as the convolution of the individual densities. A
second, and perhaps more relevant example involves a short treatment
on the “random harmonic series,” which dovetails very well with the
already-understood discussions on convergence of infinite series. The
cute fact, of course, is that the random harmonic series converges with
probability 1.
