Elementary Differential Equations MATH 240 - Fall 2009 Information

Instructor: Ivan Blank
Office: Cardwell 027
Office Hours: Thursdays 2:30 - 3:30 PM, Fridays 1:30 - 2:30 PM, and by appointment.
Phone: I don't know the password to my voicemail.  Use email!
e-mail: blanki@math.ksu.edu
Text: Elementary Differential Equations, A Geometric Approach, by Andrew Bennett

Goals of the course: To introduce students to the basic concepts and uses of differential equations, as well as methods and techniques for solving them. Differential equations arise in mathematical descriptions of situations in physics, engineering and throughout the sciences.

Notices: Information such as exam room assignments, exam solutions, etc. will be posted on the course web page. Some information will be posted on the course bulletin board in the hallway of the first floor of Cardwell Hall.

Structure of the course: This class meets four times weekly. Twice per week, on Monday and Wednesday, we will be meeting in Cardwell 101 at 11:30 a.m. This will be a lecture and generally during this time new material will be introduced. On Tuesdays, you will meet for a class period in Cardwell 144. Here you will work on computer labs, each of which is designed to introduce you to or familiarize you with a concept in differential equations. These are closely related to the material currently being discussed in the lectures. On Thursdays, you will meet in recitation sections where the primary purpose is to discuss the written homework assignments, on-line assignments, and examinations. Before examinations, any of these class meeting periods may be used for review.

Examinations: There will be three examinations during the semester. These will be held from 7:15 - 8:15 p.m. on the following Tuesday evenings: September 22, October 20, and November 17. Room assignments for the exams will be announced in lecture and posted on the web page. In addition, there will be a final examination at the scheduled time for the course--  Thursday, December 17 from 4:10 - 6:00 p.m.  Attendance at all examinations is required. During the exam you will not be allowed to use any notes, texts, or any electronic devices, including calculators.  You will only need pencils and your student identification at the exam.

Written Homework: There will be eleven written assignments consisting of problems chosen from the text. The due dates for each assignment are indicated on the course schedule and the assignments themselves are listed on the assignments web page. A selection of problems on each assignment will be graded and your assignments will be returned to you in your recitation section. Please write legibly and present your solutions in an organized and coherent form. Also, please put your solutions to the problems in the exact order in which they were assigned. The homework graders have too little time to search through your homework to find out- of-place solutions, or to try to decipher what you've written, so if your work is illegible or confusing to read, it will just be counted as incorrect. Your homework will be graded not only on the correctness of your solutions, but also on your exposition. Homework must be stapled and not folded. Please do not try to attach pages together by folding at the corner and do not use paper torn from spiral notebooks. If you fail to follow any of these rules, your homework will be rejected and you will receive no credit. Finally, please label your assignments with the correct assignment number; you will not receive credit for assignments which are not labeled with this number.  Homework is due by 5:00 p.m. on the due date.

On-line homework:  There will be 19 on-line homework assignments.  You can access these through the course assignments web page.  These assignments will be computer graded with immediate feedback. The problems are randomly generated for each student. You may try an assignment as many times as you wish before midnight of the due date and you will receive your highest score over all your attempts.  You will not be able to submit your assignment after midnight on the due date.

Lab: There will be a total of eleven computer labs which you will do during your Tuesday lab period and write up and hand in on the following Tuesday. These are all listed on the assignments web page. These too, will be graded and returned to you.  Again, I stress that all labs be written neatly and in an organized fashion. As with the assignments, please label your labs with the correct lab number. Labs are due by 5:00 p.m. on the due date.

Extra Credit: In addition, there are four extra credit assignments you may do. These are truly extra credit; the grading scale will be determined based on the required work for the course, and any extra credit points you have earned will be added to your score after the grading scale for the course has been determined. Each assignment will be accepted only up to 5:00 p.m. on its due date.

Grading: Grades will be determined from your performance on the exams, homework and lab assignments. Each of these components will receive points; the points are added and your final grade is determined from your point total.

Each component has the following maximum possible points:

Tuesday evening exams, 125 pts. each	375
Final exam, total possible 175	175
Homework assignments, 10 pts. each, drop two lowest	90
Lab assignments, 10 pts. each, drop two lowest	90
On-line assignments, 6 pts each, drop three lowest	96
Total possible before extra credit	826
extra credit- 10 pts. each	40

If you receive 90% (respectively 80%, 70%, 60%) of the total possible in the course, you are guaranteed to receive an A (respectively B, C , D) in the course.  Possibly, the final grading scale could be lower than this, depending on the difficulty of the examinations.

My advice: Points obtained from examinations constitute about 2/3 of the possible points in the class so you should devote much of your energy to succeeding on the exams. The problems on the exams will be similar to those on the homework, so a first step to success on the exams is to do the written and on-line homework.  Often, this is not enough; during the exam you will be asked to work quickly and accurately. This is always more difficult than sitting at home with the text and working on your homework. Consequently, you will be more successful on the exams if you work lots of problems before each exam, many more than were assigned for homework. You can work the problems in the text that weren't assigned or I will be glad to give you titles of books which have problems and solutions.

The labs aren't difficult but it's easy to get confused when you're in the lab sitting in front of the computer. My suggestion is to read each lab over before you go in to work on it. If you don't, you may not finish during the hour and you'll have to finish on your own time. Students sometimes have trouble writing good lab reports. I offer the following advice: 1. Include in your report explicit, easy to identify answers to all questions posed in the lab. 2. Include a sketch of any graph you are asked to plot, and label it clearly. 3. Include the results of any computer algebra calculation you are asked to do, labeled so it is clear where the result came from and what it means. 4. When you are asked to write a lab report or a paragraph discussing something, write a clear discussion of what you have seen in the lab. 5. If possible, relate what you have seen in the lab to material in the text and lectures. 6. Write in complete sentences, using good grammar and punctuation.  Your lab will be graded not only on content, but also on how well you have communicated your results.

Required Statements:
Plagiarism and cheating are serious offenses and may be punished by failure on the exam, paper, or project, failure in the course, and/or expulsion from the University. For more information refer to appendix F in the faculty handbook.

If you have any condition, such as a physical or learning disability, which will make it difficult for you to carry out the work as I have outlined it or which will require academic accommodations, please notify me in the first two weeks of the course.

The Fine Print (Note: I use the same file for the fine print for every class.  When I say "quiz" in the fine print, I mean anything which isn't a test or exam.)