Math 251:05--06 Spring 2003



Announcements

  1. The first recitation class on Wednesday, January 23 met in the InstructionalMicroLab in ARC instead of the scheduled location. This meeting was devoted to an introduction to the Maple Symbolic Computation program. Printed copies of the Maple Instructions and the description of Maple Lab0 were distributed at this meeting. In this class, the seed file for the lab was obtained from the course web page, Maple was started and work on Lab0 was begun. Students were shown how to recognize common mistakes encountered in Lab0 and shown how to save work in an eden directory in order to continue working on the lab. For subsequent labs, no printed material will be distributed. Students will be responsible for printing the lab description from the file on the web site.
  2. You have approximately two weeks to complete each Maple lab assignment. Several revisions will be needed to produce an attractive report, so you should work on parts of the project whenever you have time. Lab0 is due in lecture on Tuesday, February 4., and returned on Tuesday, February 11. The grade on lab0 will not be used in determining grades for the course, but it will indicate the standards used in grading the other four labs. Lab 1 was due on Friday, February 21. The functions defined at the beginning of Lab 1 allow vectors to be represented as lists. This makes some things easy, but it requires that these functions be used for all operations, including multiplying vectors by scalars of scaling the vector r' to get the unit tangent vector T. If this is not done, the formulas for curvature will not simplify even though it appears that you are correctly representing the formulas in Maple. To allow some time for evaluation of the results of lab 1 without falling too far behind schedule, the due date for lab 2 was extended until the first class after Spring Break, Tuesday, March 25. Lab 3 was due on Friday, April 11. Lab 4 will be due on Friday, April 25.
  3. In this section, the course will be divided into four parts, each leading to a form of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. There will be an exam at the end of each part. The exam should take about 60 minutes, so there will be time for a brief survey of the next part of the course. The first exam is scheduled for Tuesday, February 11. It aims for the topics in Sections 16.1 - 16.3, building on the first few sections of chapters 12, 13, and 14. See the Important Link below to the Lecture Schedule for details, including homework assignments and the exam schedule below for a list of topics for all exams.
  4. The final exam for this course is scheduled according to the class hour formula (exam code C), so will be held on Monday, May 12 from 8 AM to 11 AM in the regular classroom, SEC-117. It will be an exam for this lecture section only. You can expect problems very similar to those seen on the class exams, although those that seemed to be completely understood the first time won't need to be repeated.
  5. See Lecturer's Home Page and Recitation Instructor's Home Page for office hours during Reading days, May 6 and 7.


Important links



Directory

Electronic addresses are collected here for your convenience. You should seek help as soon as you notice a need. An exam is always coming soon.

Course handouts

Adobe Acrobat format. You should be able to view and print from your browser.



Copies of slides shown in lecture.

Since we meet in an Enhanced Classroom, lecture demonstrations will normally (after the first week) use a computer, and the same files can be posted here for re-viewing. This format is not practical for printing. Printable summaries will be produced before each exam.

Similar material from Spring 2001 or Fall 2001 produced from the source of the transparencies used in those lectures is also available. Although it is planned to reorder the topics, the content should be similar, so those slides should be helpful.

Current material is delayed due to the change in format. Lectures 1 and 2 will be here soon. Lecture 3 is available as basic slides. The format will evolve during the semester to make better use of the projection equipment. Watch this space!

A printable digest of all lectures in the second quarter of the course will be posted along with the lecture on Tuesday, March 4. No new examinable material is expected to be included in the lecture of March 11, so it need not be included in the digest.

Homework and Workshops

The Lecture Schedule has a list of homework problems that should be the basis of discussion in the recitation classes. There will also be quizzes in recitation. Quiz questions should be similar to homework exercises.



Exam schedule:



Information on grades.

The course grades will be based on a ranking on a 700 point scale composed of the following items:

An effort will be made to respect any clustering of grades in assigning course grades.

There will be no attempt to identify letter grades for individual exams since the course grade depends only on properties of the list of totals of all grades. However, a report on the distribution of scores on the exams will be posted here. In the table of problem averages, scaling means that the raw score has been multiplied by 10 over the maximum score allowed for the problem to allow easy comparison between problems.

Exam 1 has been graded. If you want to check the grades that I have recorded for you, you can find exam scores in the FAS Gradebook. The average on exam 1 (including only those taken at the scheduled time) was 58 and the median was 59.

Exam 1
Distribution
Range Count
76 - 80 3
71 - 75 5
66 - 70 4
61 - 65 10
56 - 60 3
51 - 55 4
46 - 50 7
41 - 45 2
35 - 40 5
below 35 1
Problems
Prob. # Scaled Avg.
1 8.2
2 8.5
3 7.8
4 7.7
5 4.9



scatter plot of grades

Exam 2 has been graded. If you want to check the grades that I have recorded for you, you can find exam scores in the FAS Gradebook. The average on exam 2 (including only those taken at the scheduled time) was 47.9 and the median was 49. The grade distribution will be shown using the attained grades in clusters of irregular size.

The scatter plot shows the comparison of grades on the first two exams with a trend line (of positive slope) and a line (of slope -1) distinguishing unsatisfactory performance (leading to W1 or W3 warnings) from satisfactory performance.

Exam 2
Distribution
Range Count
77 - 80 2
70 - 74 6
65 1
56 - 61 5
48 - 51 7
40 - 46 9
36 - 37 2
33 1
below 30 7
Problems
Prob. # Scaled Avg.
1 5.95
2 7.08
3 5.12
4 5.20
5 6.80




scatter plot of grades

Exam 3 has been graded. If you want to check the grades that I have recorded for you, you can find exam scores in the FAS Gradebook. The average on exam 3 (including only those taken at the scheduled time) was 41.24 with a median of 39.

The scatter plot shows the comparison of grades on the third exam with the sum of the first two exams with a trend line (of positive slope) and a lines (of slope -1) distinguishing several levels of performance. A total of 195 marks the bottom of a possible A-B+ cluster; 170 is the bottom of the B range; 155 the bottom of the C+ range; and 100 separates C from unsatisfactory grades.

Exam 3
Distribution
Range Count
65 - 79 6
52 - 61 7
39 - 49 9
27 - 35 8
23 or below 8
Problems
Prob. # Scaled Avg.
1 6.95
2 7.55
3 5.88
4 3.97
5 3.51




scatter plot of grades

Exam 4 has been graded. If you want to check the grades that I have recorded for you, you can find exam scores in the FAS Gradebook. The average on exam 4 (including only those taken at the scheduled time) was 40.6 with a median of 43.

The scatter plot shows the comparison of grades on the fourth exam with the sum of the first three exams with a trend line (of positive slope) and a lines (of slope -1) with totals of 275, 225, 180 and 140 distinguishing several levels of performance.

Exam 4
Distribution
Range Count
57 - 66 6
52 - 55 6
47 - 50 5
40 - 45 4
34 - 36 4
27 - 30 7
21 - 23 4
below 20 2
Problems
Prob. # Scaled Avg.
1 6.58
2 7.90
3 6.97
4 3.33
5 5.44
6 3.07




scatter plot of grades Another scatter plot has been prepared showing the role of Maple in preparing for exams. The horizontal axis shows the total of the four Maple labs and the vertical axis the total of four exams. Beyond the simple trend line, the plot reveals that very high score on the labs (around 70 out of 80) correspond to exam totals above 260. Otherwise, the trend line follows a concentration of grades, although there is a wide range of exam scores on both sides of the trend line.


scatter plot of grades

The Final Exam has been graded. If you want to check the grades that I have recorded for you, you can find exam scores, together with the course grade in the FAS Gradebook. The average on the exam was 116 out of 200.

The scatter plot shows the comparison of grades on the final exam with total of all classwork with a trend line (of positive slope) and a lines (of slope -1) with totals of 585, 520, 455, 390, 320, and 290 distinguishing the letter grades: A, B+, B, C+, C, D, F. Grades of D are given only in special cases. In this course, the grade is recorded as TD, signifying that completion of the Maple labs would allow a satisfactory grade to be assigned.

Note that final exams are kept on file for one year. You should contact the lecturer to review your exam during this time.

Final Exam
Distribution
Range Count
180 - 184 3
170 - 171 3
163 - 166 2
151 - 157 4
132 - 145 4
97 - 119 5
87 - 93 6
76 - 84 5
54 - 73 6
Problems
Prob. # Scaled Avg.
1 8.82
2 8.25
3 6.11
4 6.59
5 2.70
6 4.89
7 6.70
8 7.08
9 3.64
10 5.84
11 3.37
12 6.63

Maple Lab seed files.

You will need to save a copy of the seed file to open in Maple. There are several ways to get this copy: (1) click the right mouse button on the link to get a context menu and select save to disk; (2) press the shift key and click the left mouse button to get the save to disk dialog directly; (3) if your browser shows you the file as text, use the SaveAs item on the file menu to save a local copy. There is a better method, introduced in December 2002, but it requires some preparation. The math department web server now defines all files with extension mws as mime-type application/x-maple. This means that you can configure your web browser to do something useful in response to an ordinary left click on the link to such a file. In Netscape, select preferences from the edit menu, expand the Navigator submenu an select Applications. This will allow you to add this type and instruct the browser to Save to Disk. (It is also possible to have the browser start xmaple, but this is not recommended on eden because Netscape reserves too many colors for its own use and this causes Maple to behave strangely.)




This page changes frequently. If you don't see what you expect, use the "refresh" command of your browser to get a fresh copy. Uploads are sometimes delayed, but the aim is to get everything here when it is needed.

Comments on this page should be sent to: bumby@math.rutgers.edu
Last updated: May 14, 2003