Mathematics for Liberal Arts I

MGF 1106-5044
Fall 2002
General Course Information

For more specific information (grades, special announcements, etc.), please access the Blackboard pages. The login page can be found at http://fau.blackboard.com; once you are on that page, click on Login. Once you are logged in, you have to click on the course name, after which things might become self-explanatory. You can also click on the links at the top or bottom of this page, which have the advantage that you go directly to the login dialog box, and you log into the course pages, avoiding some initial pages. For example, you do not have to click on the course name, you'll be directly in the course. Or so I think, we are still a bit shaky on Blackboard; by the time we understand it, it will have been replaced by something else.

Table of Contents

Generalities
Graduate Assistants
Course Outline
Grading Policy
Grading Scale
Course Etiquette
A Few Blackboard Instructions
Links

Instructor: Tomas Schonbek
Office: Room 218, Science & Engineering
Phone: (561) 297-3355
Fax: (561) 297-2436
Email: schonbek@fau.edu

Class Time and Location: M W F 3:00 - 3:50 PM in GE 102.
Office Hours: M W F 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM.

TEXTBOOK

Mathematics for Liberal Arts

Richman, Walker, Wisner, and Brewer;

Prentice Hall, Fourth Edition, NJ 2000

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Graduate Assistants

Graduate Assistants in SE 231: Anateresa Chueca, Carla Petroro, and Heather Roth

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
9:00 AM
9:30 AM		Carla Petroro - SE231		Carla Petroro - SE231
10:00 AM	Heather Roth - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Heather Roth - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Heather Roth - SE231
10:30 AM	Heather Roth - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Heather Roth - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Heather Roth - SE231
11:00 AM	Anateresa Chueca - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Anateresa Chueca - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Anateresa Chueca - SE231
11:30 AM	Anateresa Chueca - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Anateresa Chueca - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Anateresa Chueca - SE231
12 Noon	Heather Roth - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Heather Roth - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Heather Roth - SE231
12:30 PM	Heather Roth - SE231		Heather Roth - SE231		Heather Roth - SE231
1:00 PM
1:30 PM		Carla Petroro - SE231		Carla Petroro - SE231
2:00 PM	Anateresa Chueca - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Anateresa Chueca - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Anateresa Chueca - SE231
2:30 PM	Anateresa Chueca - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Anateresa Chueca - SE231	Carla Petroro - SE231	Anateresa Chueca - SE231
3:00 PM	Heather Roth - SE231		Heather Roth - SE231		Heather Roth - SE231
3:30 PM	Heather Roth - SE231		Heather Roth - SE231		Heather Roth - SE231
4:00 PM	Anateresa Chueca - SE231		Anateresa Chueca - SE231		Anateresa Chueca - SE231
4:30 PM	Anateresa Chueca - SE231		Anateresa Chueca - SE231		Anateresa Chueca - SE231

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Course Outline

Mathematics for Liberal Arts is currently offered at FAU as a sequence of two courses, of which this course is the first one. If you are planning to take both courses it is probably better, though not essential, to take them in their natural order. Students passing both courses of Mathematics for Liberal Arts will have satisfied the mathematics part of the Gordon rule, which requires students to complete successfully, with grades of "C" or higher, 6 credits hours of mathematics ... in courses at or above the level of College Algebra.

It should be perhaps emphasized that this is not a way of getting around the math requirement; this is a serious, college level course. It has an Intermediate Algebra prerequisite, and students who do not satisfy this prerequisite may find themselves in trouble. In this course we will cover most of the topics in Chapters 1-5 of the textbook. We do not assume mathematical sophistication or calculational facility on the part of the students. But you WILL need a relatively decent calculator; nothing too complicated, but it should be able to evaluate roots and powers. We do assume that students will attend ALL lectures, read the text, complete the homework assignments, and study for the quizzes and exams. Grades will be posted on the web, using Blackboard. There will also be a goodish amount of supplementary material available on line, so students should be ready to spend some time in cyberspace every week.

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GRADING

Homeworks

Homework will be assigned but it won't be collected or graded. Answers to the homework are posted on the web.

Quizzes

There will be one or two quizzes per week administered online using Blackboard. Quizzes will become available after the last class of each week, and you will have until the next Thursday, at 5AM to complete them. These quizzes will count for 10% of the final grade.

Exams

There will be four exams, all together counting 90% of the final grade. The exams are scheduled as follows.

Friday, September 20
Friday, October 18
Friday, November 8
Monday, December 9, 1:15 - 3:45 PM

The grade of I (incomplete) will only be given for the reasons specified in the catalog.

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GRADING SCALE

The grading scale is as follows.

A: 94% - 100%	B: 84% - 86%	C: 65% - 74%
A-: 90% - 93%	B-: 80% - 83%	D: 60% - 64%
B+: 87% - 89%	C+: 75% - 79%	D-: 55% - 59%

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Classroom Etiquette

Due to the size of the class, it is necessary that all students remain quiet during lectures. Students who cause a disturbance will be dropped from the class. It is Florida Atlantic University policy that cell telephones must be switched off during class time.

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A few blackboard instructions

Instructions on how to access course material online and how to use Blackboard will be given in class, or can be found on line. Blackboard will be used mostly for the quizzes, special announcements, and to post grades. To contact me, regular e-mail should work fine. To actually log into Blackboard, the student login is the first initial of the first name followed by the first three initials of the last name ALL IN CAPS followed by the last four digits of the ss #. The password is the first four digits of the social security number. So that if your name is Anna Karenina and your social security number is 236-05-8879, then your login name, userid, is AKAR8879; your password is 2360. If you try to login as akar8879, or as AKAr8879, or as aKaR8879, you will be refused, declared unknown, an intruder, generate a state of yellow alert, because the computer is very case sensitive and its feelings get hurt if someone logs in using lower case letters. Once you log in, you can change your password. If you do change it, write it down somewhere or use something you are not likely to forget. And remember the case sensitivity of the computer; if you decide to use for your password, for example MathLover, the computer won't recognize mathlover or Mathlover. If you do forget your password, let me know.

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Links

Course Calendar
Topics covered by the quizzes
Links to Course Material
- Homeworks
- Exams and Sample Exams
  - Sample exam 1
  - Solutions to sample exam 1
  - Exam 1 (Solutions)
  - Sample exam 2
  - Sample exam 2, Solutions
  - Sample exam 3
  - Sample exam 3--Solutions
  - Exam 3, Version (a), (Solutions)--MS-Word document format.
  - Exam 3, Version (b), (Solutions)--MS-Word document format.
  - Exam 3, Version (c), (Solutions)--MS-Word document format.
  - Sample exam 4
  - Sample exam 4--Solutions
Links to Supplementary Material You might find some of this material interesting and/or useful.
- Professor Fred Richman has online versions of many of the topics in the textbook, and has written a whole bunch of nice javascript programs to illustrate the concepts. You can check all this out at http://www.math.fau.edu/richman/liberal/htmlbook/contents.htm
- One of our Teaching Assistants wrote out a table for outcomes of a roll of three dice. Could this have anything to do with the exam? Why not?
- The Archimedes' Home Page Archimedes (287-212 BCE) is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all times. If you like or want to like mathematics, check him out! If you hate mathematics, check out the man who bears so much responsibility for your having to suffer through this course.
- The Sand Reckoner in which Archimedes' argues about the fact that there is no end to the numbers.
- A constructive ``proof'' of the Theorem of Pythagoras, in MS-Word
- Lattice Polygons and Pick's Theorem, which gives a cute way of calculating the area of polygons withe vertices on a grid.
- Tables for the number game, a pdf document.
- Material on Syllogisms
  - Supplementary notes on syllogisms
  - A syllogism tutorial. I found this material on the web. It is a java program generating random syllogisms. You can test your knowledge by classifying them as they show up. Most seem to be invalid.

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