(*) Except for Thursdays at which there are Faculty Council Meetings, normally
the second or third Thursday of each month.
Course Description
This is the first course in the Calculus sequence. For some people
it will be a pleasurable experience, for others the most horrible thing
they have ever had to do. While I hope most of you will enjoy at least
parts of the course, making the course enjoyable is NOT my mission.
My mission is to try to get you to learn some calculus and parts of it are
hard, require a lot of studying, and I have no intention of circumventing
a topic merely because learning it can be painful. As the saying goes,
"no pain, no gain." Having now scared you enough, I hasten to say that
having the adequate preparation and a willingness to work hard is all it
takes to understand the material of this course, and if you understand it
you'll pass it. You might even pass it without understanding too much
of the material, but that is a risky venture; better understand as much
as possible. I also hasten to say that there is a lot of help available,
and you should avail yourself of it whenever you feel you need it.
In the first place, try not to miss any class. You should not be fanatic
about this; if your car breaks down on I-95 on the way to class, you should
not abandon your car and try to hitch a ride to FAU so as not to miss
the class. But you should try to attend all classes; in fact, there could
be penalties assessed for missing too many classes (see below). If you are
following what I am doing in class and suddenly I say something which is
totally incomprehensible to you, you should have no qualms about interrupting
and asking me for clarification. If things still are unclear, you should
consult me after class, preferably during office hours. You may also want
to ask your classmates; if you can't find any class mate who isn't as lost
as you are then there is something terribly wrong with the course and
you better tell me about it. Our Department usually organizes tutorial
sessions for calculus and if everything else fails, as an absolutely last
resort, you may want to consider hiring a tutor. Before doing this, you
may want to look up some books on calculus other than the textbook, to
get a different perspective. KNOW AND VISIT FREQUENTLY YOUR
COLLEGE LIBRARY. You may also want to check out the following
somewhat unconventional calculus books, published by the Mathematical
Association of America, perhaps even buy one or two of them. I do not
recommend them too strongly, but you should at least know they exist.
How to ace Calculus, The Streetwise Guide, by
Colin Adams, Joel Hass and Abigail Thompson
Paperbound, 1998, $14.95
What is Calculus About? by W.W. Sawyer,
Paperbound, 1998, $20.95
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Calculus, A Calculus
Course Companion by Michael Spivak,
Paperbound, 1995, $9.95
In this course we shall cover Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 of the textbook.
A tentative calendar is linked to this page. Chapter 1 is a review of
College Algebra; I'll say a few words about it on our first class.
Our second class will be held in our computer laboratory, S& E 201,
and will be an introduction to Scientific Notebook/Maple. Some of the
homework (see below) will require the use of a computer and several
of our classes will be held in the laboratory.
The course proper starts on Thursday, January 2. We will try to
keep a brisk pace, proceeding at the rate of one section per class.
I will assume that you have
at least looked at the "section of the day" before coming to class;
ideally you'll have at least read it, understood most of it, and have
either some good questions or a few enlightening comments to make about
the material. Things are, of course, rarely ideal. At the end of each
chapter we'll have an exam, to a total of 5 exams. Homework shall be assigned
every Friday and will be due on the following Wednesday.
Not all homework you turn in will be graded; once you
have handed in the homework, I'll tell you which exercises I plan to
grade. The good news is that
homework will occasionally or frequently be graded in
a very liberal manner; moreover, in compiling the final homework grade
a lot of weight will be given to effort and your homework grade may
exceed by a wide margin the sum of all the individual grades, as long as this
sum is relatively high. The two lowest homework grades will be dropped.
The bad news is that
illegible homeworks, homeworks with an excessive amount of crossed
out material, exceedingly messy homeworks, shall be ignored. In
other words, do your homework (as well as everything else in the
course) as if you cared for what I think about your work. Pretend
it is a report for a job, perhaps.
For the final grade, the lowest of the five exam grades will be dropped, the
other four exams account for 60% of the grade, the homework accounts for 15%
of the grade and the final exam accounts for 25% of the grade. There will
be no make-ups. If you miss one exam, that's the exam that gets
dropped. Try not missing more than one and if you miss one, try to
get good grades on the four remaining ones.
Because I think that
class attendance has its importance in the learning process, I
shall occasionally have a roll call. A student found to have
missed more than 6 classes will be penalized by a loss of up to
5 points in the final grade. However, missing classes won't
change a C- to a D or a D to an F.
