MATH 427L: ADVANCED CALCULUS FOR APPLICATIONS II

General Information

      Unique ID: 54335 --- Spring 2015

      Instructor: Dave Rusin (rusin@math.utexas.edu) 
      Office hrs: Tues & Thurs 2pm-4pm, Wed 3pm-4pm, and by appointment,
      in RLM 9.140 . (I am usually in my office during ordinary business hours
      but if you want to be sure I'm available, let me know in advance.)

      Text: Vector Calculus 6th Ed., Marsden and Tromba.

      Class meets T,Th in CPE 2.208, 12:30-2:00 pm. Plan now so that you 
      will have time to eat lunch at some other time than in class!

      Teaching assistant: Juan Rodriguez (jrodriguez@math.utexas.edu) 
      You will meet Mondays and Wednesdays with him, 3pm-4pm in CLA 0.130.
      He will hold office hours Tuesdays from 4pm to 6pm

      Your final exam is Monday, May 18, 9:00-12:00 noon, NOT
      in the regular classroom but rather in ECJ 1.202 (Cockerell Hall)
      There is no provision for taking the final exam earlier or later.

Course webpage: http://www.ma.utexas.edu/~rusin/427L/ It is unlikely that I will post any important material to Blackboard or Canvas; for any additional information I want to give you outside of class you should come to this webpage.

Catalogue Description

Matrices, elements of vector analysis and calculus of functions of several variables, including gradient, divergence, and curl of a vector field, multiple integrals and chain rules, length and area, line and surface integrals, Green's theorems in the plane and space, and, if time permits, complex analysis.

Pre-requisites

The prerequisite is a grade of at least C- in Mathematics 408D or 408M. Please note that if you had a C- in one of those courses, you have the weakest background in the class and so you should be working hardest and getting the most help and feedback from me and the assistant.

Graded material

Your semester grade will be based on a number of components. This structure is designed to encourage you to stay actively involved in the course all the way through the semester. Any adjustments to the schedules or policies will be announced multiple times in lecture and via email and on the course website shown above.

Homeworks: There will be homework due weekly, done online using the Quest system, located at https://quest.cns.utexas.edu/. This will enable you to get constant feedback on how well you are understanding the material. The homework must be completed online by the date posted, typically about one week after it becomes available. You will accumulate points during the semester, and your "Homework score" will be your average score as reported by Quest (on a scale of 0-100). Note that Quest will subtract points for wrong answers, so think carefully before you answer or you could end up with a negative score!

Quizzes: There will be a quiz approximately every other week. As with the homeworks, this will be scaled to give you a semester "Quiz score" of up to 100 points. The Teaching Assistant will give further information about how the quizzes will be totalled.

Exams: There will be 2 mid-term exams, to be held during the usual class period, and a comprehensive final exam. Each midterm is worth 100 points and the final is worth 200 points. I expect the dates of the midterms to be Thursday Feb 26 and Tuesday Apr 14. Please mark on your calendars now the time and date of the exams. (I don't know yet what room the final exam will be held in.) Textbooks, notes, and electronic devices (including phones and calculators) are not permitted during exams. The exams will be a mix of multiple-choice and free-response questions; the ratio will change as the semester progresses.

Attendance: I will be at class every day and expect you to be, too, until the last day of our class (May 7). We will use the class time to work problems together and I *WILL* call you to come forward and explain things to the class. In particular: I'll notice if you're not there...

Letter Grades

Your semester grade is based only on the number of points accumulated from the above mix of 600 possible points. I will use this conversion table:
Point total Semester grade
550-600 A
530-549 A-
510-529 B+
490-509 B
470-489 B-
450-469 C+
430-449 C
410-429 C-
390-409 D+
370-389 D
350-369 D-
0-349 F
If for some reason there is a deviation from this scale it will be applied uniformly to the whole class, and it will be announced in class. I promise that if anything, I will only make the scale more generous! WARNING While the letter grade distributions in my classes tend to look like those of other instructors, students often report that my tests tend to be difficult and long, and so the numerical scores are not high. Here is what the mean scores were in a recent semester: (Standard deviations shown in parentheses.)

You will notice that this mean score roughly separates the A's and B's from the C's, D's, and F's above; after all A and B are supposed to mean "above average", right? (Mean is not the same as median; most of the students last semester got A's and B's; only 11% of the letter grades were D's and F's.)

No letter grades will be assigned to the midterms, quizzes, or homeworks, but you should keep track of where you stand: I will advise you of the class averages and you can use this data from other semesters as a rough guideline.

Policies

Classroom activity: Our meeting times together are very short so we must make the most of them. Come to class daily and ask questions; this is greatly facilitated by reading ahead each day and doing the homework problems as they are assigned. Please silence your cell phones. I will always assume that any conversations I hear are about the course material so I may ask you to speak up.

Make-ups: It is in general not possible to make up missing quizzes or homework assignments after the due date. If you believe you will have to miss a graded event, please notify me in advance; I will try to arrange for you to complete the work early.

Students with disabilities: The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. For more information, contact the Office of the Dean of Students at 471-6259, 471-4641 TTY.

Religious holidays: If you are unable to participate in a required class activity (such as an exam) because it conflicts with your religious traditions, please notify me IN ADVANCE and I will make accommodations for you. Typically I will ask you to complete the required work before the religious observance begins.

Academic Integrity. Please read the message about Academic Integrity from the Dean of Students Office. I very much prefer to treat you as professionals whose honesty is beyond question; but if my trust is violated I will follow the procedures available to me to see that dishonesty is exposed and punished.

Campus safety: Please familiarize yourself with the Emergency Preparedness instructions provided by the university's Campus Safety and Security office. In the event of severe weather or a security threat, we will immediately suspend class and follow the instructions given. You may wish to sign up with the campus alert programs.

Counseling: Students often encounter non-academic difficulties during the semester, including stresses from family, health issues, and lifestyle choices. I am not trained to help you with these but do encourage you to take advantage of the Counselling and Mental Health Center, Student Services Bldg (SSB), 5th Floor, open M-F 8am-5pm. (512 471 3515, or www.cmhc.utexas.edu

Add dates: If you enroll within the first four class days of the semester, and have missed any graded material, I will adjust the weighting of your graded sections accordingly so that you are not penalized. No such accommodation is made for students who enroll on the 5th day or later. (Such students must enroll through the MPAA advising center in RLM, and ordinarily I do not admit students who ask to enroll then if they have missed any graded activities).

Drop dates: Jan 23 is the last day to drop without approval of the department chair; Feb 4 is the last day to drop the course for a possible refund; Apr 6 is the last day an undergraduate student may, with the dean's approval, withdraw from the University or drop a class except for urgent and substantiated, nonacademic reasons. For more information about deadlines for adding and dropping the course under different circumstances, please consult the Registrar's web page, http://registrar.utexas.edu/calendars/14-15/

Quest: This course makes use of the web-based Quest content delivery and homework server system maintained by the College of Natural Sciences. This homework service will require a $25 charge per student per class for its use, with no student being charged more than $50 a semester. This goes toward the maintenance and operation of the resource. Please go to http://quest.cns.utexas.edu to log in to the Quest system for this class. After the 12th day of class, when you log into Quest you will be asked to pay via credit card on a secure payment site. Quest provides mandatory instructional material for this course, just as is your textbook, etc. For payment questions, email quest.billing@cns.utexas.edu.

Computers: We don't make use of sophisticated software in this class, but if you find this interesting, you are welcome to use the department's computer facilities. Our 40-seat undergrad computer lab in RLM 7.122, is open to all students enrolled in Math courses. Students can sign up for an individual account themselves in the computer lab using their UT EID. We have most of the mainstream commercial math software: Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, etc., and an asortment of open source programs. If you come to my office you will see me use some of this software to help illustrate concepts. Please see me if you would like more information.

Schedule

We have a LOT to do this semester --- expect to fly through about three sections every week!

Advice

You may have spent most of your mathematical life working on problems by yourself. This is a good thing; you become self-reliant. However, I strongly encourage you to work with one or two other students in this class on a regular basis. Challenge each other to solve the problems, to explain the concepts, and to ask each other for help. This is the way mathematics is done in the real world, and practicing this now can help you this semester and beyond.

Since you are adults, I leave it to you to monitor your level of understanding on your own, and to seek help when you need it. But please allow me to share my experience. Every student who starts this class has met the pre-requisites and has the expectation that he or she will succeed. Nonetheless, every semester, about one-fourth of this group of bright, hard-working students ends up with a D or F, or withdraws. No one likes this outcome. Please be attentive to your progress on homeworks and quizzes and midterms. If you find you are always asking other people for help while studying; if you find that it takes you hours and hours to complete every homework set; if your quiz grades are low, or you score less than half the possible points on a midterm exam: in these cases, you CAN succeed, but ONLY if you change your patterns immediately. Optimism is a wonderful thing but it alone cannot bring the results you may want. Please see me early in the semester if you think you may have trouble during this course. I can try to help you with the material, or with your study habits, or else advise you to withdraw. Let's make this the first-ever 100% successful Math 427L class!

One more suggestion: have fun this semester! Some of us think math is so cool that we end up doing it for a living. I will try to convey to you some of what's kewl, and invite you to consider majoring (or minoring) in math, joining the math club, or simply taking more math classes. I am always happy to talk in my office about mathematics topics beyond what we discuss in class.