This course satisfies the formal studies requirement where it is in force.
The course is intended to provide exposure to a variety of mathematical ideas. The emphasis is on topics which are interesting and where the conclusion of a mathematical development can be understood with only high school algebra as background.
This varies with the instructor. Recent treatments have included; street networks, traveling salesman problem, polling data, voting systems, fair division problems, Fibonacci numbers, gnomic growth, golden ratio, tilings, Mandelbrot set.