This is the webpage of Andrew McIntyre. I am a math professor at Bennington College in Vermont.
I am currently using this WordPress site for notes for classes. I may eventually migrate professional information over here as well.
My email address is amcintyre, the “at” symbol, and then bennington.edu.
For Spring 2022, we are in person! I have not set up office hours yet; you can contact me through email (address above).
In Spring 2022, I am teaching Calculus: A Classical Approach, and Logic, Proofs, Algebra, and Set Theory. See menu at top for links.
You can find a (messy) statement of my teaching principles here.
Math is powered by MathJax.
If you have landed here at random, please don’t use these materials without contacting me for permission. Thank you!
In our acquisition of knowledge of the Universe (whether mathematical or otherwise) that which renovates the quest is nothing more nor less than complete innocence. It is in this state of complete innocence that we receive everything from the moment of our birth. Although so often the object of our contempt and of our private fears, it is always in us. It alone can unite humility with boldness so as to allow us to penetrate to the heart of things, or allow things to enter us and taken possession of us.
Alexander Grothendieck
This unique power is in no way a privilege given to “exceptional talents”—persons of incredible brain power (for example), who are better able to manipulate, with dexterity and ease, an enormous mass of data, ideas and specialized skills. Such gifts are undeniably valuable, and certainly worthy of envy from those who (like myself) were not so “endowed at birth, far beyond the ordinary.”
Yet it is not these gifts, nor the most determined ambition combined with irresistible will-power, that enables one to surmount the “invisible yet formidable boundaries” that encircle our universe. Only innocence can surmount them, which mere knowledge doesn’t even take into account, in those moments when we find ourselves able to listen to things, totally and intensely absorbed in child’s play.
