Math 3C, Lecture 2, Course Page
(2-2:50 MWF, Psychology 1824)

Final exams may be viewed during my office hours.
for current office hours.

Check the syllabus for office hours, locations, and general advice on how to do well in the course. Or you can print the pdf version of the syllabus.

Webwork accounts: If you are enrolled in the class, you should have been sent an e-mail with your username and password. Obviously, you can only read this e-mail if you check your umail account or if you have set up a valid forwarding address to an e-mail account you use. Some of you have invalid forwarding addresses in their umail accounts. If you haven't received your username and password, first check your umail account and see whether you have set up mail forwarding to a nonexistent e-mail account. Fix this problem first, then e-mail me (see address on syllabus). Once you login, you can change your e-mail address to whatever you prefer. Here are the Webwork-based homework problems. Here is an article from the newsletter of the Mathematical Association of America with some statistical evidence that using Webwork improves students' scores on exams.

Other web-based calculus exercises: Another web-based resource for sharpening your calculus skills is the COW library.

Additional notes: Prof Crandall's additional class notes are available in postscript or pdf format. It is crucial that you understand everything he talks about in these notes before the end of the quarter. You are unlikely to pass this class without doing so. The earlier you understand, the better your scores will be on the quizzes and exams. You are not expected to do this on your own. Both Scott and I should be a good source of answers to your questions. Here is a link to Prof Crandall's Math 3C page.

The reader: You may download the reader in pdf format here:

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2

Annoying errors: Here is a link to that article about the most common errors in undergraduate mathematics, which I asked you to read in the first lecture. Many of these same mistakes greatly depress me and put me in an ungenerous mood when it comes to giving partial credit. It's a good idea to reread this before exams. You may understand and remember more each time you read it.

Euler's method: I made up a spreadsheet in Excel to help you play with Euler's method to find approximate solutions of differential equations. You are encouraged to try it with different equations, initial values, and stepsizes. You can use it to graph the approximate solution vs. the exact solution, if you know what the exact solution is. Here is a Maple worksheet that does the same thing without the nice graphics, but can find the exact solution of the DE as well. It's rather self-explanatory and even if you've never used Maple before, you should be able to understand quite well how it works. If you've written a program in a different language to do Euler's method and you'd like to share it with your classmates, I'll be happy to post it here.

Practice exams: To view the practice exams and exam solutions, you will need a viewer that can display pdf such as Adobe Acrobat Reader or Ghostscript + Ghostview. I want you to come up with your own solutions to the problems in your practice exam. I don't believe you benefit much from reading someone else's solution. Therefore I will notpost solutions to them. If you are stuck, there are many sources of help available to you, such as talking to a fellow student, office hours (mine or Scott's), MAP, Mathlab, CLAS. Use these wisely: ask for a hint to get you started, but don't ask for a complete solution. Remember that on the exam you are on your own. You may also want to check out Prof. Crandall's review sheet for his midterm.

Practice exams in pdf	Practice exams in postcript
Practice midterm	Practice midterm
Practice final	Practice final

Here are the four versions of the midterm in pdf:

White midterm

Green midterm

Yellow midterm

Blue midterm

And finally here are sample solutions to the white version of the exam:

Pdf version

Postscript version

Here is an approximate grading scale for the first midterm. It is important that you understand that this scale is indeed rather approximate and that the class is not curved until the very end. We record your score on the exam and not the letter grade it would translate to. In particular, the boundaries are not significant. It's better to think of this as a continuous scale rather than a discrete one. There is no point stressing about being just 1 point away from the next higher grade. For example, you should think of both a score 44 and a score of 45 as borderline between A and B, 45 is a little bit more A than 44, but ultimately the difference of 1 point is about 1.75% on this midterm, and 0.525% of your total grade in the class assuming that the midterm counts 30%, and exactly half as much if the midterm counts 15%. Use this scale to give you a general idea of where you stand and what you need to do to achieve the grade you are aiming for in this class.

Score	Grade
45-57	A
40-44	B
35-39	C
28-34	D
0-27	F