Участник:Yury G. Kudryashov/Teaching Statement

Mathematics <…> starts with certain simple principles and proceeds by steps. You can start with nothing and learn. It’s practically designed for that.

— Isaac Asimov, Profession

While being an Assistant Professor at Higher School of Economics, I gave lectures to students with very different mathematical background. In the next sections I will describe some concrete problems I faced and how I solved them.

Pre-calculus for non-mathematicians

The first year I came to HSE I gave pre-calculus courses at Faculty of Politology (practice lessons) and at Faculty of History (lectures). Many students were anxious about math or thought that they would never need it.

My first goal was to convince them that mathematics is useful and is not too hard to understand. For this end, I gave many examples related to real life, or students' area of interest. Another goal was to explain to them that mathematics is not about applying some formulas, but about understanding the problem.

I think that I achieved these goals with most of the students.

Math for linguists

The year I came to HSE, the Faculty of Philology was opened. Ilya Schurov and me developed the program of a two-year mathematical course for linguists. We talked to many professors of this faculty to understand what kind of mathematics do they need for their courses.

As a result, the course includes mathematical logic, combinatorics, probability theory, regular expressions and finite state automata, and calculus.

Also, I gave an elective course on non-standard mathematical problems that do not require any formal math knowledge.

Math for economists

I gave practice lessons on calculus and linear algebra to 1st-year students of the joint NES/HSE “Bachelor in Economics” program (1 year), and lectures on calculus of multiple variables to second-year students of the same program (1 semester × 3 times).

For the latter course, I also developed the program (mostly based on Stewart, part II). Students coming to this program have different background. Some of them are the winners of Russian Mathematical Olympiad, others don't know how to find a vector parallel to the plane 3x+2y+z=0.

So, my goal was to fill the gaps in the background of some students while not making it too boring for the top ten students. To achieve this goal, the main part was targeted at average and below-average students, and we gave some exercise sheets on advanced topics for the best students.

Faculty of Mathematics

Besides standard problems like different background of the students (expectually of the 1st year students), teaching the students of the mathematical department has a unique difficulty. The problem is that students regularly ask questions on advanced topics only loosely related to what we discuss in class. So, on the one hand, I had to postpone the discussion of such questions till the end of classes, and on the other hand I had to be ready to discuss topics I never dealt with since I was a student.

Math in Moscow Program

“Math in Moscow” is a program for foreign students. Each semester several students come to Moscow, listen some courses, get credits, and these credits are transferred to their home institutions.

The small size of the groups allowed me to work with students personally. For example, practice lessons proceeded like this: I gave students a list of problems, the students tried to solve them, and I came to each student to discuss his ideas.

The programs of the courses were developed by lecturers and regarded the level of students who chose the course.