SUNY Geneseo Department of Mathematics
Spring 2015
Prof. Doug Baldwin
Last modified January 19, 2015
Time and Place: TR 1:00 - 2:15, Fraser 213; W 12:30 - 1:20, Sturges 104
Final Meeting: Monday, May 11, 12:00 Noon - 3:00 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.
Web Pages:
Lecture Notes: http://www.geneseo.edu/~baldwin/math222/spring2015/lectures.php
Exercises: http://www.geneseo.edu/~baldwin/math222/spring2015/exercises.php
Calculus is the mathematics of change, i.e., the mathematics that describes 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 continues the exploration of calculus begun in Calculus I (Math 221). In particular, it expands your repertoire of methods for calculating derivatives, integrals, and limits, and shows you how to apply those operations to a wider variety of problems and functions. This course thus continues preparing you for further study of mathematics, and gives you a solid ability to use calculus in other fields.
Prerequisite(s): Math 221
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.
Some of the ideas in this course (and, for that matter, many mathematical ideas in general) are clearer if you can see them in the form of graphs or other visualizations, and some of the material we will study involves calculations that are impractical to do by hand. I thus expect you to have some sort of calculator or software that can graph mathematical functions and apply them to long lists of numbers. I recommend (and will use and be prepared to support) the R and R Studio software packages—they are free, easy to install, and run on any popular computer. You can download R from
http://cran.r-project.org/
R Studio isn’t strictly necessary, but it is a nice user interface for R. You can download it from
http://www.rstudio.com/products/RStudio/
(Get the open source version.)
Your textbook may come with a software package called MyMathLab. I do not plan to use this software, but if your book came with it you can resell it along with the book as long as you 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/
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. 20 | Introduction |
| Jan. 21 - Feb. 4 | Transcendental Functions |
| Feb. 5 - Feb. 26 | Methods of Integration |
| Mar. 3 | Hour Exam 1 |
| Mar. 4 - Mar. 12 | Differential Equations |
| Mar. 16 - Mar. 20 | Spring Break |
| Mar. 24 - Apr. 15 | Infinite Sequences and Series |
| Apr. 16 | Hour Exam 2 |
| Apr. 21 - Apr. 28 | Parametric Curves |
| Apr. 29 - May 5 | Curves in Polar Coordinates |
| May 11 | Final Exam |
Your grade for this course will be calculated from your grades on exercises, exams, etc. as follows:
| Final | 30% |
| Hour Exams (2) | 20% each |
| Problem Sets (8 - 10) | 25% |
| 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.