Philosophy and Objectives of Mathematics

General Philosophy, Aim and Objective

The Philosophy, Aim and Objective of the Department include training up persons who;

  1. Are analytically sound and able to reason logically.
  2. Are self-confident, highly motivated, articulate, result-oriented and creativity-driven.
  3. Have a wide, current and ordered knowledge in the general area of mathematics and are at the cutting edge of developments in the area.
  4. Are sufficiently trained and have acquired the necessary knowledge and skills required to enable them go into productivity employment.
  5. Have acquired the doggedness to face problems squarely and have thus acquired the appropriate skills for such.
  6. Are able to appreciate the principles and theories of mathematics and consequently able and willing to apply same in tackling the problems of the society.
  7. Are able to accept, appreciate and exhibit such moral value as honestly, discipline, excellence, self-reliance, humility, docility, truthfulness, high ethical standards, probity, accountability, etc.
  8. Have a desire to contribute to the progress of society.
  9. Have a desire for and commitment to life-long education at the highest level.
  10. Are ready to engage on productive study and research in mathematics at higher levels.
  11. Are read to excel in any area of endeavor subsequently.

Projections

The game plan is to run a multi-pronged program in the Department with specialization areas or options in pure and /or Applied Mathematics, Industrial Mathematics, and Mathematics with computer science and others. The following serve as a guide. In addition to the core courses which are sine-qua-non for every student of mathematics.

  1. A student wishing to major in industrial option should choose elective courses from actuarial mathematics, computer science, statistics (inference, operations research, probability, regression analysis, stochastic analysis, etc), management science and economics courses.
  2. A student wishing to major in the applied option should choose elective courses from mechanics, physics, engineering, geological science etc.
  3. A student wishing to major in the pure option has a lot of leverage with regard to elective courses but must pay attention to probability theory courses in statistics.
  4. It is expected that any graduate of the Department must have been adequately exposed to computer science courses as to be very computer literate. Also such a graduate must have had considerable exposure to statistics.