What do the following people have in common?
Carl T. Rowan, columnist for the Washington Post
Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) author of Alice in Wonderland
Christopher Wren, architect of St. Paul's Cathedral in London
Virginia Wade, tennis player, Wimbledon champion
Lawrence Leighton Smith, conductor and pianist

Project 4.2

Write a paper on the relationship between geometric areas and algebraic expressions.

References

Albert B. Bennett, Jr., "Visual Thinking and Number Relationships," The Mathematics Teacher, April, 1988.
Robert L. Kimball, "Sharing Teaching Ideas: Using Pattern Analysis to Determine the Squares of Three Consecutive Integers," The Mathematics Teacher, January 1986.

Project 4.3

Write out a derivation of the quadratic formula.

References

You can check almost any high school algebra book.

Project 4.4

References

A source I recommend highly is the movie The Proof one of PBS's shows on the NOVA series. The web page for this move is:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/
Another general overview is at this site:
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/HistTopics/Fermat's_last_theorem.html