Math 111.01/02, Fall 1998
Applied Mathematical Analysis I
General Information
- Instructor: David
Smith
- Class meetings
- Monday and Wednesday, Room 205 Physics
- Section 01, 9:00-10:00 am
- Section 02, 10:30-11:20 am
- Friday, Room 032 Physics
- Section 01, 9:00-10:00 am
- Section 02, 10:30-11:20 am
- Office hours
- Mon 1:15-3:15 and by appointment.
- To make an appointment, send an e-mail request or call 660-2823.
- Instructor absences
- Your instructor will be out of town on the following dates:
- September 18-20, Core Plus Mathematics Project National Advisory Panel, Ann Arbor, MI (leaving after class on the 18th)
- October 8-10, Keynote speaker and workshop presenter, Missouri Calculus Reform Conference, Osage Beach, MO
- October 15-18, National Science Foundation proposal reading, Arlington, VA
- October 22-25, Activity-Based Physics Project National Advisory Panel, Tufts University, Medford, MA
- October 31-November 3, Psychology of Mathematics Education Conference, Raleigh, NC (may not miss class on Nov. 2)
- November 19-22, International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics, New Orleans, LA
- A substitute will cover classes on October 9, October 16, October 23, November 2 (if needed), and November 20. No classes will be cancelled.
- Textbook
- Class e-mail list
- You can communicate with all members of your section by sending e-mail
to mth111-01@acpub.duke.edu or mth111-02@acpub.duke.edu.
In particular, this is a good way to ask or answer a question or to discuss
a topic of interest to the class. You will also get messages from the instructor
this way.
- Reading Assignments
- Much of what you will learn in this course will not come from lectures.
There is a reading assignment for most class days. You are expected to
study those assignments before the corresponding class day and to
ask questions about anything you don't understand. Expect the reading to
be hard work. You should work with others in the class when you are studying
and working on homework. You can ask questions of classmates or instructor
-- in person, by phone, or by e-mail.
- Writing Assignments
- You will be expected to use what you have learned in the University
Writing Course (and elsewhere) to write clear, direct English prose about
your thought processes and your work on various sorts of problems. You
will find it useful to read A
Guide to Writing in Mathematics Classes by Annalisa Crannell (Franklin
and Marshall College), which you can access on the World Wide Web from
this page, from the course home page, and from the course syllabus page.
- Homework Assignments
- Homework problems will be assigned in a weekly plan posted on the course
web page. Your solutions will be collected and graded on a weekly cycle.
No late homework will be graded without a dean's excuse.
- You can't do a good job on a whole week's homework if you start on
it the night before it is due. Use the daily assignments as a guide to
when you should start each problem. If, after working the assignment, either
you do not understand the material or you are not proficient at working
the problems, then you should work additional problems on your own. You
are encouraged to work on homework in groups, but your written answers
must be in your own words.
- Laboratory Work
- This class will meet in the computer laboratory (Physics 032) every
Friday to begin a weekly project in teams of two. You cannot afford
to miss lab for any reason other than illness or an excused absence --
and you must make up missed labs, on your own time and possibly without
a teammate. The lab work is intimately related with work in class, and
35% of your grade is based on the lab.
- Lab submissions are due on Wednesday each week. To submit your lab work,
first be sure both names are in the file, near the top, where they
are easily found. Then mail the final version of your file to your instructor,
as well as to your partner (copy yourself, if you wish). Your instructor
will use a Reply To All to send it back, so the comments and grades will
go to both partners. In particular, if both your Math 111 address and your
acpub address are on the submitted file, the graded file will go both places.
- Tests
- All tests will be open-book. No make-ups will be given without a dean's
excuse. There will be
- two scheduled take-home tests (starting dates October 14 and November 9), and
- a two-part final exam.
- The first part of the final will be an end-of-term essay of fixed length
on a specified topic. The topic will be announced on November 30, and the
essay will be due in the last class period on December 9.
- The second part of the final will be given in the Math block exam time, Wednesday, December 16, 7-10 pm.
- Electronic journal
- Each student will keep an electronic journal consisting of at least
two paragraphs per week. The object of the journal is to record how things
are going, what you learned during the week (sketchy detail is all right),
what seems to be working well, what's not working, points on which you
may be confused, observations about how your group functions or doesn't
function, and so on. These possible topics need not all be discussed every
week -- just whatever may be important at the time. A journal is an important
tool for personal growth, but it also gives you a way to help the instructor
make mid-course corrections in the way the course is conducted.
- Journal entries will not be graded for content, but they are required
for a small portion of the course grade (see below). The weekly due date
is Friday (starting September 11, omitting only the last week of classes),
but earlier submissions are acceptable -- pick a convenient time, which
may be different each week. Submit your journal entries to your instructor
by e-mail with a subject line including the word "journal."
- Some journal entries may call for a response or a comment -- these
will be handled by return e-mail. Some may contain significant insights
that should be shared with the class. In that case, all personal identifying
information will be stripped out, and the insight will be posted on the
class bulletin board.
- Team Work
- Lab work will be done by teams of two students. The instructor will
make team assignments and will change them periodically. When a team's
work is submitted by e-mail, the name of each participating member must
be in the file. If a member was not present during the lab session or did
not participate fully, then that person's name must be omitted. Separate
reports from missing partners generally will not be accepted except by
prior arrangement with the instructor.
- You will find useful information about working in groups in Ten
Guidelines for Students Doing Group Work in Mathematics by Anne
E. Brown, Indiana University South Bend. The first half of this document
is directed to instructors, but the second half -- the list of guidelines
-- is for you.
- Cooperation
- The Undergraduate
Honor Code does not preclude cooperation, except when a particular
task is designated to be done without assistance. Learning is a cooperative
activity -- and the "real world" demands workers who have learned
to cooperate in order to solve more substantial problems than individuals
can solve working alone. Therefore, some tasks in this course will be assigned
to designated groups, and such tasks will receive a group grade.
- Open- vs. closed-book activities
- The "real world" is, among other things, a very large collection
of "open books". Success does not require memorizing the contents
of those "books" but rather understanding how to use available
resources in an intelligent way. Closed-book tests do little to measure
such understanding, so all activities in this course -- including tests
-- will be open-book.
- Language
- The language of communication in this course is English -- written,
spoken, and read. You should expect to be using all three forms of English
communication often.
- Calculator
- For classroom work and homework you will need a graphing calculator
with "sufficient
capabilities," as defined by the Department for first-year courses.
No specific make or model is required.
- It is desirable, but not essential, that your calculator also be capable
of doing matrix operations, of drawing direction or slope fields, and of
drawing solutions of differential equations. For example, TI-86, TI-89, and HP-48
calculators have these capabilities.
- Grading
- There is no intellectually respectable justification for pretending
that understanding of mathematics (or any other subject) can be measured
by numerical point scales. University policy requires that overall performance
in a course be assigned a letter grade; as indications of progress along
the way, each graded activity will also be assigned a letter grade relative
to the instructor's expectations for that activity. Such grading is sometimes
called "subjective." The alternative to subjective grading is
not "objective" -- it's arbitrary.
- Semester Grades
- Your letter grades from the different components of the course will
be weighted approximately in the following way. Your instructor will use
the weighted average and his own best judgment to assign the grade you
have earned.
| Team work |
|
|
Individual work |
|
| Lab reports (11) |
35% |
|
Homework |
15% |
| Class participation |
5% |
|
Electronic journal |
5% |
|
|
|
Take-home tests (2) |
20% |
|
|
|
Final Exam |
20% |
| Total |
40% |
|
Total |
60% |
- Assistance
- Your instructor can be called at any reasonable time, and you can send
an e-mail query at any time.
- Use your instructor's office hours.
- Don't let confusion go unresolved. Help is available, but you have
to ask, or no one will know you need it. It is a sign of strength
-- not weakness -- to know when you need help and to ask for it.
David A. Smith <das@math.duke.edu>
Last modified: September 12, 1998