Syllabus

Section 1 MF 8:10-9:00 a.m. & TTh 8:40-9:30 a.m., Howard Hall 254

Section 2 MTThF 11:30-12:20 a.m., Howard Hall 132

My friend Heather studies how much carbon is secured from the atmosphere by desert plants. At one point she needed to quantify the amount of carbon present in the soil surrounding the roots of a plant. How did she do it? Using a definite integral! I use integrals nearly every day to make sense of length and angle in infinite dimensional function spaces. Integration is a versatile tool and the first main focus of this course. Our second focus is on the convergence (and diverengence of course) of infinite sequences and sums. These too are fundamental to both pure and applied mathematics.

These are the revised office hours. M 2:30-3:30, T 9:40-10:40 & 1:00-2:00, W 1:00-2:00, Th 9:40-10:40 & 2:30-3:30, F 1:00-2:00; and by appointment.

There is an old saying that mathematics is not a spectator sport. The true test of whether you understand a mathematical topic is if you can solve problems, even if you are able to follow everything in the text and in class. At a deeper level, research in learning theory and in mathematics education suggests that working problems on your own is not just a convenient measure of your mastery of the material, but is actually a necessary step towards understanding:

"... pupil's learning depends on their recognition and re-construction of problems as being their own. ... A problem is a problem for a student only if she or he takes the responsibility for the validity of its solution. This transfer of the responsibility for truth from teacher to pupil must occur in order to allow the construction of meaning." (p. 259 of N. Balacheff, Towards a problematique for research on mathematics teaching, Research in Mathematics Education, 21 (1990) 258-272)

This is the main reason why homework is assigned in this course. There are also two secondary reasons why homework is assigned, collected, and graded, and why late homework is not accepted. First, it gently force you to keep up with the material. If one falls behind in a mathematics class, it is often very difficult to catch up. And second, the homework provides me with an easy way of telling whether the class and I are on track. If I find out a few days after covering a topic that most of the class is having trouble with it, we can easily go back and mend the problem; if I discover the same thing two weeks after covering the topic, we probably have a serious problem that is not easily remedied.

Homework assigned Monday and Tuesday will be due by 3:00 p.m. on the following Thursday. Homework assigned Thursday and Friday will be due by 3:00 p.m. the following Monday. Please drop homework off in the box by my office door. Your lowest homework score will be dropped in figuring your final grade.

Often more problems will be assigned than the grader will have time to grade, in which case only a representative sample of the homework problems will be graded. I ask my grader to grade homework problems on a 2-point per problem scale: 2 if a correct solution was obtained by a valid method, with adequate supporting work to demonstrate your solution; 0 for no significant progress towards the solution; and 1 for anything between work warranting either a 0 or a 2. Late homework will not be accepted.

I strongly encourage you to work together on homework problems, but each of you should turn in your own homework paper.

There will be three hour exams and one final exam in this course. I intentionally make the in-class, 50-minute examinations long enough so that a well prepared student who works quickly and makes few mistakes that must be corrected should be able to finish the examination and have a few minutes to look over his or her work in the allotted time. Those whose mastery of the material does not permit them to work quickly, e.g., if he or she needs to reconstruct solution techniques, and those who make several injudicious starts that must be redone, will probably feel some time pressure.

When you turn in your 60-minute exam, I will give you another copy of the same exam, which is due at the beginning of the next class session. (Late copies will not be accepted.) I encourage you to work together on this re-take of the exam, and I hope that you will get 100% on it! Your score for the exam will be the average of the two scores.

No one should feel any time pressure on the final examination; I will write it to take two hours and you will have three hours to complete it. There are advantages and disadvantages to both testing formats -- ample or insufficient time -- and I prefer to see your performance under both. Note that the re-take procedure described above is only for hour exams; no "re-take" of the final will be given.

Make-up exams will only be given if a valid reason for missing the exam is given IN ADVANCE. Note that travel is NOT a sufficient excuse to have an exam scheduled on a different day. Make winter break travel plans early to avoid any conflict.

See the Tentative Schedule and Homework page for information on when the exams will occur.

Your final letter grade for Math 132 will be based on the weighted total of the scores below. (Note that final grades are NOT based on fixed, pre-determined percentages, however 90% guarantees a minimum grade of A-, 80% a minimum grade of B-, etc.) See page 28 of the College Catalog for an explanation of what each letter grade signifies.

    Homework: 15%

    Midterms 1-3: 20% each

    Final Exam: 25%

Academic honesty is expected of all Lewis & Clark students. In this course, homework can and should be worked on and discussed with others, but the work you hand in must be your own. No form of collaboration will be permitted on take home exams. You are permitted to use the text and your notes however.