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I'm hoping the userbase here doesn't mind if I do a little crowd-sourcing.

I'm curious to find out about popular general-interest mathematics or statistics classes that are offered universities that you know about. By popular I mean crowd pleasing, in that these courses are suitable to large audiences, the course is aimed at the student that wants to know a little bit about the subject -- but they don't want to take a foundational course, or a course on proofs. This course isn't intended for majors in any particular subject, more for students that just want to dabble in some ideas but not "dive in" -- so there would likely be little homework of much intensity (by a math major's standards, at least).

Physics or astronomy departments sometimes have courses with titles like "astrophysics for poets". I'm curious about math offerings you might know of that are of that flavour. I'm particularly interested in course-catalogue listings and course webpages, if possible. I'm not interested in one-off type courses -- I want courses that have been repeated with success, and preferrably having more than one instructor that has been able to offer it with success (sorry if this is getting demanding). I'm not very interested in upper-level courses (like a fractals or dynamics course that assume students know a fair bit of calculus). I wonder if many people have been able to turn topics like gambing or knot theory into accessible "no background required" offerings or not.

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You might check out When Topology meets Chemistry by Erica Flapan or The Knot Book by Colin Adams.

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    Do you know of regular "large enrollment" courses that are offered, based on this material? This seems like a course that should be offered to a relatively small, motivated group of students.2011-02-11
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My university offers a 2nd year course on Discrete math which is very popular. It requires no prerequisite knowledge except highschool algebra. This is basically a university level course on problem solving. It includes puzzles, games, number theory, riddles, as well as basic coding thoery, crytopgraphy and graph theory. The course follows the text "The puzzling Adventures of Dr Echo".

http://books.google.ca/books?id=UvYGqvXfgbcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%5CThe+Puzzling+Adventures+of+Dr.+Ecco&source=bl&ots=8LlBwI0kE9&sig=ZbW7f9d45RamYiL7G62Nb6UNq8U&hl=en&ei=6LFUTZSCEYa0lQe7pcmTBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

This is a required course for all students wishing to become math teachers as it explains much of the theory behind the games and puzzles used in elementary school. There is no course website but here are some assignments so you can see what I'm talking about.

http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~bpowell/Math%20222/Exam/Exam%20Review.pdf

http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~bpowell/Math%20222/Assignment%203/Ast%203.pdf

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    @Ryan: We also have a "History of Mathe$m$atics" course: one section with about $6$0 students. That may be something that general science students may find interesting but probably not arts students as some math background is requried.2011-02-11
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This is probably very late, but for what it's worth...

At Brown, Tom Banchoff sometimes teaches a first-year seminar called "Exploring the Fourth Dimension." (In fact, it looks like he's teaching it this coming fall.)

I don't know what he covers, but it's certainly intended for a very broad audience.

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    @RyanBudney: I'm realizing the link I posted requires a password that I don't have; sorry about that. I know that Banchoff has taught the course at least four times, roughly once every two years. At Brown, First-Year Seminars are all capped at $20$ students -- the university really over-hypes them, in my opinion -- so sometimes there may be waiting lists to enroll. Enrollment is done purely on a lottery basis. The grading basis may even be mandatory Pass/Fail, but this I don't recall.2013-06-27