Essays - General Information

A significant and important portion of the work for this course consists of writing essays. There are a total of four essays, in roughly increasing order of difficulty. 

For each essay, you have a week. Since many of the essays are peer-reviewed and tied in with the course schedule, late submissions are not acceptable. Start early if possible to avoid stress before the deadline.

For Essays 2 and 3, you are also required to provide two peer reviews each for other students, and the original author has to write a rebuttal, i.e., a response to the peer reviews. Note that if you miss to turn in an essay, you cannot do a peer review for that paper either.

We will have discussions in class about what makes a good essay, a good peer review, and a good rebuttal.

The length of  each essay should be between 600 (recommended) and 1200 (hard maximum) words excluding references and formulas but including footnotes or endnotes. Essays significantly over the word limit are penalized with a subtraction of points.

Here are some general good guidelines from Oxford University about essay writing in history of mathematics. Download essay writing in history of mathematics.

Plagiarism

When writing the essays, copying sources without proper referencing is considered as plagiarism and is not permitted. Please see the page Cheating and plagiarism at the KTH web site for more information on plagiarism and how to avoid it. 

Grading criteria

Content: 70%

  • The text answers the questions at hand and focuses on relevant issues for the question(s) – 25%
  • The text is clearly structured, the argumentation is clear, sound, creative, original, balanced, and critical. Where appropriate, good illustrating examples are provided. – 25%
  • The text shows good understanding of the source tests. – 7%
  • The text integrates the source text into the general historical context and shows a deeper understanding of its role. – 7%
  • The selection of source texts (where applicable) is good (relevance, supports the argument) – 6%

Form: 30%

  • Mathematical correctness – 12.5%
  • Correct and complete citations – 10%
  • Language and style – 5%
  • Spelling and grammar – 2.5%