Some Mathematical Elements in a First-Year Seminar Course.

A first-year seminar general education course provides a good opportunity to search for mathematical topics associated with the popular culture represented in the course's required films and readings. We discuss mathematical connections to several books, including Life of Pi and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and to the film Goodbye, Lenin! We also describe a few games and tricks to explore the use of logical reasoning as a component of the "ways of knowing" theme for the first-year seminar course and we consider the potential limitation of a lack of quantitative reasoning skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]