Course website for Fall 2008 16A (Short Calculus)

General information

Course code: MAT - 016A - 3
CRN: 69434
Professor: Alexander Coward
Main course textbook: Calculus: An Applied Approach, 7th Edition, by R. E. Larson, B. H. Edwards (Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006)
Sections to be covered: 1.1-1.6; 2.1-2.8; 3.1-3.4; 3.6-3.8; 8.1-8.4.

 

Prerequisites

It is essential that you meet the course requirements. All students taking Math 16A are required to have completed two years of high school algebra, plane geometry, plane trigonometry and to have satisfied the Mathematics Placement Requirement (MPR).

Lecture information

Lectures will all be held on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 3:10pm in Giedt Hall, Room 1001.

Because of Thanksgiving, there will be no lecture on Friday, 28th November.

Homework

Homework will be set throughout the term, and will usually be from the course textbook. When you have finished the homework, you should go to the Calculus Room (see below) to get help with anything you don't understand and to get general feedback on your work. Remember, it is your responsibility to make sure you are keeping up with the course, and only by doing the homework will you know that you are keeping up.

See below for a summary of past homework assignments.

Assessment

The assessment for this course will be in the form of one midterm exam and one final exam. The midterm will take place in class on Friday, October 31st and the final examination will take place on Friday, December 12th at 10:30am.

Your overall grade will be calculated as follows: If you do better in the final than the midterm then your overall grade will be calculated with the final weighted at 75% and your midterm at 25%. If you do better in the midterm, then your final and midterm will be weighted equally.

The use of calculators, books or notes will not be allowed in the examinations. There will be no make-up examinations.

Here is a practice midterm. Here are the solutions. Make sure you practice differentiating more compicated functions using the product, quotient and chain rules, and trigonometric functions.

The average grade on the Midterm was 69.5%. The standard deviation was 14.3%. The deciles were: 87.5% (top 10% - approximate 'A' cutoff), 82.5% (top 20%), 78.5% (top 30% - approximate 'B' cutoff), 75.5% (top 40%), 71% (top 50%), 67% (top 60%), 62.5% (top 70% - approximate 'C' cutoff), 57% (top 80%), 50% (top 90% - approximate 'D' cutoff), 32% (top 100%). Please note the approximate cutoffs mentioned here are for illustration only, and the final cutoffs may vary.

Syllabus

The syllabus for the course is everything covered in lectures and homework. It will be based around the syllabus available here.

How to get help

The are several ways that you can get help with this course. They are:
  1. The Calculus Room (Mathematical Sciences Building, Room 3118) This is open from 11am until 6pm, Monday to Friday and will usually be the best place for you to get help. There are people there who specialize in helping students out in Calculus, and they'll be happy to give you as much help as you need. Don't forget to take your homework along with you and ask them what's good about it, and how you could do better.
  2. My office hours You can come to see me in my office (Room 2214, Mathematical Sciences Building) to discuss you work on Wednesdays and Fridays between 9am and 10am.
  3. The Internet Calculus is an old subject and there are plenty of resources online that you may find helpful. In particular try visiting www.calculus.org.
  4. Each other Don't forget to talk to your fiends about the course and help each other out.
One of the keys to your success in this course is accessing the support that is available to you. Make sure you get help when you need it.

Computer resources

There are several mathematical computer programs which will be illuminating for you to experiment with. I particularly like Maple and there others such as Mathematica and MatLab which you might also like to try. To use these programs you will need to set up an account. Follow this link to do so.

Another piece of software which you may like to purchase for you own computer is Geometers Sketchpad. This is very good for exploring a variety of mathematical ideas, and in particular one can use it to easily plot graphs of interesting functions.

There is a good tool for plotting graphs here.

Summary of homework assignments

Remember that material from homework may well come up in the midterm and final.

Lecture 1 (09/26/08): Read Section 0 (apart from pages 0-22 and 0-23) of the course textbook, and make sure that you are comfortable with this preliminary material. Take any queries you have on this section to the calculus room and get them resolved straight away.
Lecture 2 (09/29/08): Work from Exercise set 1.4 until you are confident on these sort of questions. The following would be a suitable selection of questions for you to do: 12, 15, 25, 27, 28, 31, 37, 41(e)(f), 51, 54, 60, 72.
Lecture 3 (10/01/08): No homework set.
Lecture 4 (10/03/08): Review Sections 1.1 to 1.3. Do problems from Exercise sets 1.1 to 1.3, to include: 7, 23 from 1.1; 17, 41, 45, 49, 53 from 1.2 and 25, 35, 39, 57, 64, 81 from 1.3.
Lecture 5 (10/06/08): Carefully read Sections 1.5, 1.6 and 3.6. Do problems from set 1.5 to include: 5, 11, 19, 22, 29, 37, 41, 42, 43, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 55, 57, 68, 69. Do problems from Chapter 1 Review to include: 82, 83, 86, 89, 90, 91.
Lecture 6 (10/08/08): Do questions from problem set 1.6 to include: 17, 25, 32, 39, 43, 45, 46, 53, 61. Review Section 1.5.
Lecture 7 (10/10/08): Carefully read Section 2.1. Do questions from problem set 3.6 to include: 1, 3, 7, 8, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 27, 31, 63b.
Lecture 8 (10/13/08): Carefully read Section 2.1 again as well as Section 2.2. Do questions from problem set 2.1 to include: 19, 21, 23, 25, 32, 33, 36, 41, 43, 48.
Lecture 9 (10/15/08): Read Section 2.4. Do questions 50, 51, 55, 69 from problem set 2.1 and questions from problem set 2.2 to include: 13, 14, 19, 21, 23, 25, 28, 34, 37, 43, 47, 48, 53.
Lecture 10 (10/17/08): Read sections 8.1 to 8.4. Do questions from problem set 2.4 to include: 5, 8, 10, 19, 20, 23, 31, 36, 37, 42, 45, 48, 57.
Lecture 11 (10/20/08): Read section 2.3. Do questions from problem set 8.4 to include: 7, 9, 11, 20, 21, 28, 29, 30, 35, 36, 39, 30. Make sure to set things out clearly like the examples we did in lectures.
Lecture 12 (10/22/08): Read sections 2.5 and 2.6. Do questions from problem set 2.3 to include: 19, 23, 31, 32, 33. Revise for the midterm by reviewing your lecture notes and doing the practice midterm.
Lecture 13 (10/24/08): Read section 2.7. Do questions from problem set 2.5 to include: 19, 27, 29, 49, 55, 57, 58, 63, 67, 69. Do questions from problem set 2.6 to include: 5, 9, 39.
Lecture 14 (10/27/08): Read section 2.8. Do questions from problem set 2.7 to include: 8, 17, 20, 22, 24, 29. Do questions from problem set 8.4 to include: 47, 48.
Lecture 15 (10/29/08): Revise for Midterm.
Lecture 16 (10/31/08): Midterm Today. No homework set.
Lecture 17 (11/03/08): Read section 3.1. Do questions from problem set 2.8 to include: 5a, 6a, 9b, 10a, 13b, 14b, 17b, 18, 19, 23.
Lecture 18 (11/05/08): Read section 3.2. Do questions from exercise set 3.1 to include 6, 7, 8, 15, 25, 27, 29, 37 and questions from set 8.4 to include 47, 48.
Lecture 19 (11/07/08): Read section 3.3.
Lecture 20 (11/10/08): Do questions from exercise set 3.2 to include 9, 13, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 43, 44.
Lecture 21 (11/12/08): Read section 3.4. Do questions from exercise set 3.2 to include 45, 46, 47, 48 and questions from excercise set 3.3 to include 5, 7, 14, 24, 26, 29, 39, 45, 48, 50, 65.
Lecture 22 (11/14/08): Read section 3.5. Do questions from exercise set 3.4 to include 3, 6, 9, 11, 13, 19, 23, 24, 25ac, 26, 32, 35, 38, 39.
Lecture 23 (11/14/08): Review sections 3.4 and 3.5. Do questions from exercise set 3.5 to include 3, 7, 10, 14, 15, 17, 23, 25.