SUNY Geneseo Department of Mathematics
Fall 2014
Prof. Doug Baldwin
Last modified August 27, 2014
Time and Place: TR 10:30 - 12:10, Fraser 202A
Final Meeting: Tuesday, December 16, 8:00 - 11:00 AM
Instructor: Doug Baldwin
Office: South 307
Phone: 245-5659
Email: baldwin@geneseo.edu
Office Hours: Any time Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, when I’m not committed
to something else. See my
Calendar for details and to make appointments electronically. You don’t need to make
appointments to see me, but may if you want to be sure I’ll be available.
Web Pages:
Lecture Notes: http://www.geneseo.edu/~baldwin/math221/fall2014/10/lectures.php
Exercises: http://www.geneseo.edu/~baldwin/math221/fall2014/10/exercises.php
A colleague (Olympia Nicodemi) suggested that “calculus tells the stories of functions.” The same idea is often phrased less poetically as “calculus is the mathematics of change.” However you say it, calculus is the branch of mathematics that lets you understand how quickly functions grow or diminish and where, how small changes in functions accumulate, what their limiting behaviors are, etc. Change is important and ubiquitous in the real world: the discoverers of a new asteroid measure where it is, but the really interesting question is where it’s going and whether we are in its way, i.e., how its position and ours are changing—physicists and astronomers use lots of calculus; your MP3 player wouldn’t be any fun to listen to (in fact you couldn’t hear it at all) if the sound never changed—sound engineering is deeply entwined with calculus. Similarly calculus is foundational math for chemistry, biology, economics, engineering, computer graphics, and a host of other sciences.
This course introduces the fundamental ideas of calculus. It provides a starting point for further study of calculus (and other math) for students who wish to continue, and establishes a basic ability to apply calculus both inside and outside of mathematics for everyone.
Prerequisite(s): Math 112 or precalculus with trigonometry or the equivalent
Learning Outcomes: On completing this course, students who meet expectations will be able to…
The (required) textbook for this course is
Weir et al., Thomas’ Calculus (13th ed.)
It is available from the College bookstore and other sources.
Note that this book will also be used for Calculus II in the spring of 2015 (and possibly beyond).
I will use the R software package to introduce digital technology for mathematics. R is free software that can be downloaded for any popular operating system from
http://cran.r-project.org/
R should install on your computer without difficulty, but I will be happy to help if you run into problems.
Your textbook comes with a software package called MyMathLab. I do not plan to use this software, but you may find it useful in later calculus courses if you take them, and it increases the resale value of your book if you don’t. Do Not Use Your MyMathLab Access Code or Open MyMathLab! MyMathLab is only usable for a limited time after activation, and using or opening it now will make it unusable and unsellable later.
The publisher’s web site for our textbook is
http://wps.aw.com/aw_thomas_calculus_series/
Lecture notes from another section of this course that I am also teaching are at
http://www.geneseo.edu/~baldwin/math221/fall2014/02/lectures.php
They cover the same material as this section does, but may illustrate it with different questions and discussions.
The following dates are best estimates. They may well change as students’ actual needs become apparent. Refer to the Web version of this syllabus for the most current information, I will keep it as up-to-date as possible:
| Aug. 26 | Introduction |
| Aug. 28 - Sept. 16 | Limits |
| Sept. 18 - Oct. 7 | Introduction to Differentiation |
| Oct. 9 | Hour Exam 1 |
| Oct. 16 - Oct. 28 | Extending Differentiation |
| Oct. 30 - Nov. 13 | Applications of Differentiation |
| Nov. 18 | Hour Exam 2 |
| Nov. 20 - Dec. 4 | Integration |
| Dec. 16 | Final Exam |
Your grade for this course will be calculated from your grades on exercises, exams, etc. as follows:
| Final | 25% |
| Hour Exams (2) | 20% each |
| Problem Sets (10 - 12) | 30% |
| Participation | 5% |
| Real-World Math Bounty | Extra credit equivalent to up to 1 problem set |
The “real-world math bounty” is an invitation to find problems in other classes, current events, your own daily life, etc. that can be discussed in class and solved using the math we are learning. For each such problem you bring to me and that we can use in class, I will give you 1 point of extra credit, up to a maximum of 10. I want this to basically be a flexible and fun way to bring examples into the course, but I will refine or clarify rules for it if needed during the semester.
In determining numeric grades for individual assignments, questions, etc., I start with the idea that meeting my expectations for a solution is worth 80% of the grade. I award the other 20% for exceeding my expectations in various ways (e.g., having an unusually elegant or insightful solution, or expressing it particularly clearly, or doing unrequested out-of-class research to develop it, etc.); I usually award 10 percentage points for almost anything that somehow exceeds expectations, and the last 10 for having a solution that is truly perfect. I deliberately make the last 10 percentage points extremely hard to get, on the grounds that in any course there will be some students who routinely earn 90% on everything, and I want even them to have something to strive for. I grade work that falls below my expectations as either meeting about half of them, three quarters, one quarter, or none, and assign numeric grades accordingly: 60% for work that meets three quarters of my expectations, 40% for work that meets half of my expectations, etc. This relatively coarse grading scheme is fairer, more consistent, and easier to implement than one that tries to make finer distinctions.
This grading scheme produces numeric grades noticeably lower than traditional grading does. I take this into account when I convert numeric grades to letter grades. The general guideline I use for letter grades is that meeting my expectations throughout a course earns a B or B+. Noticeably exceeding my expectations earns some sort of A (i.e., A- or A), meeting most but clearly not all some sort of C, trying but failing to meet most expectations some sort of D, and apparently not even trying earns an E. I set the exact numeric cut-offs for letter grades at the end of the course, when I have an overall sense of how realistic my expectations were for a class as a whole. This syllabus thus cannot tell you exactly what percentage grade will count as an A, a B, etc. However, in my past courses the B+ to A- cutoff has typically fallen somewhere in the mid to upper 80s, the C+ to B- cutoff somewhere around 60, and the D to C- cutoff in the mid-40s to mid-50s. I will be delighted to talk with you at any time during the semester about your individual grades and give you my estimate of how they will eventually translate into a letter grade.
I will accept exercise solutions that are turned in late, but with a 10% per day compound late penalty. For example, homework turned in 1 day late gets 10% taken off its grade; homework turned in 2 days late gets 10% taken off for the first day, then 10% of what’s left gets taken off for the second day. Similarly for 3 days, 4 days, and so forth. I round grades to the nearest whole number, so it is possible for something to be so late that its grade rounds to 0.
I do not normally give make-up exams.
I may allow make-up exams or extensions on exercises if (1) the make-up or extension is necessitated by circumstances truly beyond your control, and (2) you ask for it as early as possible. At my discretion, I may require proof of the “circumstances beyond your control” before granting a make-up exam or extension.
Assignments in this course are learning exercises, not tests of what you know. You are therefore welcome to work on them in small groups, unless specifically told otherwise in the assignment handout—a well-managed group makes a successful, and thus more educational, project more likely.
In order to avoid confusion when people work together, please indicate clearly what work is yours and what comes from other sources on everything you hand in. The appropriate “indication” depends on how much work is yours and how distinguishable it is from your collaborators’. At one extreme, if a group of people work together on all parts of an assignment, they could hand in one solution with all their names, and a brief statement of what each person contributed, on it. At the other extreme, if you do most of an assignment on your own but get a specific idea from someone else, you might just include a comment or footnote to the effect of “this idea comes from Betty Smith” in whatever you hand in. The bottom line is that everything you take credit for must include some identifiable contribution by you, and you should never claim credit for work or ideas that aren’t yours. I’ll be glad to advise you on what I consider appropriate forms and acknowledgements of collaboration in specific cases if you wish.
Please note that tests are tests of what you know, and working together on them is explicitly forbidden. This means that if you take advantage of the collaboration policy to avoid doing your share of the work on the exercises, you will probably discover too late that you haven’t learned enough to do very well on the tests.
I will penalize violations of this policy. The severity of the penalty will depend on the severity of the violation.
SUNY Geneseo will make reasonable accommodations for persons with documented physical, emotional, or cognitive disabilities. Accommodations will be made for medical conditions related to pregnancy or parenting. Students should contact Dean Buggie-Hunt in the Office of Disability Services (tbuggieh@geneseo.edu or 585-245-5112) and their faculty to discuss needed accommodations as early as possible in the semester.