For your Math 331 assignment, to create your bibliography you're required to provide "a list of several references including primary sources, if available."
From Professor Jabbusch: "Where did the proof of your theorem first appear? If it was in Euclid's work, then Euclid's Elements would be your primary source (even if you don't follow his proof directly)."
Primary sources
A primary source provides direct or firsthand evidence about an event, object, person, or work of art. Primary sources include:
- Books (for instance, an autobiography)
- Historical and legal documents
- Eyewitness accounts
- Results of experiments
- Diaries
- Letters
- Statistical data
- Pieces of creative writing
- Audio and video recordings
- Speeches
- Art objects
- Interviews
- Surveys
- Fieldwork
- Internet communications via email, blogs, listservs and newsgroups
- Empirical studies - research where an experiment was performed or a direct observation was made. The results of empirical studies are typically found in scholarly articles or papers delivered at conferences.
Secondary sources
Secondary sources describe, discuss, interpret, comment upon, analyze, evaluate, summarize, and process primary sources. Secondary source materials can be:
- Books (most)
- Newspaper articles
- Popular magazine articles
- Book or movie reviews
- Scholarly journal articles that discuss or evaluate someone else's original research
Definitions from the Ithaca College Library: https://library.ithaca.edu/sp/subjects/primary
