After the success of a course on cryptography for a general audience, based on Simon Singh's "The Code Book" [49], I decided to try again and create a mathematics course for a general audience based on "The Physics of Star Trek" by Lawrence Krauss [32]. This article looks at the challenges of designing a physics-based mathematics course "from…

Popular culture provides many opportunities to develop quantitative reasoning. This article describes a junior-level, interdisciplinary, quantitative reasoning course that uses examples from movies, cartoons, television, magazine advertisements, and children's literature. Some benefits from and cautions to using popular culture to teach…

In the typical first-year mathematics course--whether it be calculus or a general education quantitative proficiency course--we struggle to help students see the relevance of mathematics to their own lives. Particularly in a focused course such as calculus, there is a danger that students see mathematics as an isolated subject, with applications…

Prisoner's Dilemma is a common game theory scenario in which two players must choose between acting cooperatively or out of pure self-interest. What a player decides affects not only his own outcome but also that of the other player. "Friend or Foe," a TV game show that has appeared on the cable Game Show Network (GSN), places pairs of contestants…

"The Simpsons" is an ideal source of fun ways to introduce important mathematical concepts, motivate students, and reduce math anxiety. We discuss examples from "The Simpsons" related to calculus, geometry, and number theory that we have incorporated into the classroom. We explore student reactions and educational benefits and difficulties…