SUNY Geneseo Department of Mathematics
Spring 2019
Prof. Doug Baldwin
Last modified January 22, 2019
Time and Place: MWRF 1:30 - 2:20, Sturges 221
Final Meeting: Thursday, May 16, Noon - 3:20 PM
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.
Outline of Course Materials: http://www.geneseo.edu/~baldwin/math221/spring2019/course.php
A colleague (Dr. Olympia Nicodemi) once defined calculus by saying “calculus tells the stories of functions.” In other words, calculus is the branch of mathematics that lets us understand the behavior of functions in “big picture” terms: how and where functions increase or decrease, what the cumulative effect of such changes is, what the limiting behavior of a function is as its input gets very large or very small or comes near to some other special value, etc. Such views of functions are important and ubiquitous in the real world: physicists and astronomers don’t want to know just how fast a planet, atom, or other object is moving now, they also want to know where that motion will take the object in the future or brought it from in the past; economists don’t only want to know the output of a business or industry or country, they also want to know how price or demand or other factors lead output to change. In similar ways, calculus helps answer fundamental questions in chemistry, biology, engineering, computer graphics, and a host of other fields.
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 study more mathematics, and gives everyone a basic ability to apply calculus both inside and outside of mathematics.
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
Doug Baldwin and OpenStax, Calculus Volume 1
This is a free open educational resource (OER) book. It is based on a text from Openstax.org, with slight modifications to correct some typos, clarify wording, and fit Geneseo’s calculus course. You can get a PDF of this custom version of the book through Canvas. Although I recommend the custom version, if you would rather use the original it is available in several formats at
https://openstax.org/details/books/calculus-volume-1
One of this course’s goals is to develop your awareness of technological tools for doing calculus and related mathematics. We will use Mathematica, a popular symbolic math system; you will need to install it on your computer. Follow the instructions for doing this at
https://wiki.geneseo.edu/display/cit/Mathematica+Installation+and+Licensing+Instructions
Materials from the last time I taught this course are available at
https://www.geneseo.edu/~baldwin/math221/fall2017/course.php
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:
| Jan. 23 - Jan. 25 | Introduction |
| Jan. 25 - Feb. 11 | Limits |
| Feb. 11 - Mar. 11 | Derivatives |
| Mar. 11 | Hour Exam 1 |
| Mar. 11 - Apr. 11 | Applications of Derivatives |
| Apr. 11 | Hour Exam 2 |
| Apr. 11 - Apr. 29 | Integrals |
| Apr. 29 - May 8 | Applications of Integrals |
| May 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 (8 - 12) | 30% |
| Participation | 5% |
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 offer a “real-world math bounty”, i.e., 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 in principle use in class, I will give you 1 point of extra credit, up to a maximum of 10. Problems should be suitable for use in this class, but don’t actually have to be so used (i.e., if you don’t want your problem used publicly, or a chance to do so doesn’t come up, you can still get credit for it). You should describe each problem in your own words, and please don’t bring homework assignments from another class to do as examples in this one, but apart from those rules I want this to be a flexible and fun way to bring examples into the course.
I will from time to time announce other extra credit opportunities, mostly involving attending math-related events on campus, in class.
“Supplemental instruction” (SI) is the name for a system of review and practice sessions held outside normal class hours. A trained student leads these sessions, and a number of colleges (including Geneseo) have found that they help students who use them do well in courses. We are fortunate to have an SI leader, Madison Rodgers (mor1@geneseo.edu), associated with this course. She will introduce herself in class and let you know when and where SI sessions will be.
Mathematica, calculators, and similar automatic tools for doing math may not be used on homework exercises except where explicitly permitted; on the other hand, they may be used freely on exams unless explicitly forbidden.
(Since this may seem like a strange, or even backwards, rule, here is the reason for it. As math students you face a dilemma concerning calculators. On the one hand, no-one in the “real world” does math by hand that a machine can do instead; on the other hand doing math by hand does, over time, build intuition for how and why it works the way it does. So I think you should both learn to use calculators, and at the same time practice doing without them. Of all the places you will “do math” in this course, exams are the place where the real-world merit of calculators, namely being time-saving devices that free people up to focus on the creative parts of a problem, most pays off. Conversely, the place where you most have time to reflect on manual mathematics, and where it is easiest for me to check or assist with it, is the homework exercises.)
Mathematical notation and terminology matter. Even though they may seem arcane, each symbol and technical term has a specific meaning, and misusing symbols or terms (including not using them when you should) confuses people reading or listening to your work. Therefore, correct use of mathematical terms and notations will be a factor (albeit probably a small one) in grading assignments and tests in this course.
(The same applies to me, by the way: if you think I’m not using terms or notations correctly, or you just aren’t sure why I’m using them the way I do, please question me on it.)
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 help each other with them, unless specifically told otherwise in the assignment handout. However, solutions that you turn in must represent your own understanding of the solution and must be written in your own words, even if you got or gave help on the assignment.
If you use sources other than this class’s textbook or notes in order to do an assignment, you must include a comment or footnote citing those sources in your solution. Similarly, if you get help from anyone other than me you must acknowledge the helper(s) somewhere in your solution. (But note that I generally think learning from outside sources and people is a good thing, not a bad one.)
Tests are tests of what you know, and working together on them is explicitly forbidden. This means that if you get help from other people or sources without understanding what they tell you, 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.
The campus provides a range of support services to help students thrive in their classes. Of these services, the one best suited to this course is the Math Learning Center, located in South 332. For more information, including hours, see https://www.geneseo.edu/math/mlc.
Other on-campus tutoring services include:
Information on times and locations is available through the Center for Academic Excellence website at www.geneseo.edu/library/center-academic-excellence.
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. Requests for accommodations including letters or review of existing accommodations should be directed to the Office of Disability Services in Erwin 22 (disabilityservices@geneseo.edu or 585-245-5112). Students with accommodation letters should contact their faculty members as early as possible in the semester to discuss specific arrangements. Additional information on the Office of Disability Services is available at www.geneseo.edu/dean_office/disability_services.
Geneseo offers many other services to help students succeed. For a list of some, see https://wiki.geneseo.edu/display/PROVOST/Student+Success+Resources.