MATH 240 SYLLABUS

This course will present the main concepts and terminology of linear algebra that play an essential role in mathematics and in many technical areas of modern society, such as computer science, engineering,  physics, environmental science, economics, statistics, business management, and social sciences.
     Management of the course will be conducted with the help of WebCT, a course-management program adopted by the University of Maryland. Each registered student has a password-protected WebCT page that contains all pertinent information about the course: the complete syllabus, schedule of lectures and quizzes, list of homework assignments, and exam review sheets.
     NOTE: The first lecture is on Tuesday, September 2, during your recitation class, in the mathematics building.

Texts:       Lay, Linear Algebra and Its Applications, 3rd ed., Addison-Wesley, 2003
                   Lay, Study Guide, 3rd ed.  (for Linear Algebra and Its Applications)

Order of Topics:
 

WebCT:    MATH 240 is one of nearly 300 courses that are using the WebCT course-management program at the University of Maryland this semester. It provides a means of communication between instructors and students, and ties the courses into the Internet and the University's registration and record systems. You have been assigned an account on the University's WebCT course page: www.courses.umd.edu. To login to WebCT, click on myWebCT@Maryland. Your WebCT space has a copy of this syllabus, a daily lecture schedule, and a tentative list of homework assignments. Additional information, such as review sheets and sample exams, will be added during the semester. For help with WebCT (including a student manual), go to the web site and click on Student Resources.

Online Quizzes:   An important use of WebCT will be to administer online open-book quizzes, to help you learn the course material. Most quiz questions can be answered by reading the text carefully, word by word. Taking these quizzes will help you develop study skills that are essential for success in this and subsequent mathematics courses. By the end of the course, anonymous students evaluations typically give the quiz system high ratings.
     Quiz Organization   The schedule of lectures shows the tentative date each quiz is to be completed and identifies the text section on which the quiz is based. Usually, each quiz is available on WebCT any time between the end of one lecture and ten minutes before the next lecture. Most quizzes will consist of five questions: true/false questions or multiple choice questions that ask you to decide whether a certain statement is always true, sometimes true, or never true.
     Taking a Quiz   You should read the text carefully before starting a quiz, and keep your text open for reference while taking the quiz. Once you start a quiz, you will have twenty minutes in which to complete it. (Typically, students spend between five and ten minutes on a quiz.) If your internet connection fails, sign on again immediately in order to complete the quiz within the 20 minutes. After you read each question, select an answer and "save" it. You may change an answer and resave it at any time until you press Finish. After that, press Display Results. WebCT will grade your quiz and display the results, with comments about each question.
     Honor System   The quizzes are conducted on the honor system. No two students will have exactly the same quiz, but the questions will be similar and cover the same basic material. You should have your book open for reference, but you must not communicate with any other person about the quiz while taking the quiz. Also, you should not look at any other student's quiz before taking your own quiz. (You will be asked to agree to this policy on WebCT.)
     Getting Started   To help you learn the quiz system, you may take each of the first two quizzes two times each, with only the higher scores counted. In addition, you should take a survey before the second lecture (Sept. 5). In WebCT, click the "Quiz and Survey" button. At the top of the list of quizzes, click on "Survey 1". It has the same format as a quiz and counts as a quiz, but it is anonymous. There will be two other surveys later in the course.
     Grading   Each quiz and survey counts 5 points. (The points for a survey will be added manually about one week later to the student quiz grades.) A few quizzes have a bonus question that allows a possible score of 6 points. Makeup quizzes will not be given, but the two lowest quiz grades will be dropped from the final "quiz" total. [In all previous linear algebra courses, the quiz grades have been somewhat higher than the averages of the four hour exams, so the quiz scores tend to help most students.]
    Problems  Occasionally, a student feels that a quiz is worded or graded incorrectly. If this happens to you, you may write to David Lay (lay@math.umd.edu). Please make a copy of the quiz question and answer from your screen, and paste this into your email. Explain what you think might be wrong with the quiz question or answer. If there is an error, your grade on this question will be adjusted, and all other students who had this same question will be treated in the same way. (This situation occurred more often during the early semesters of using WebCT, but it still could happen to a few of the newer quiz questions now.)   IMPORTANT: To receive a response to your email, you must include your course name and section number (MATH240-01xx) in the message header. Your student name should be in the text message, of course.

Homework:   Success in the course is highly correlated with regular attendance and punctual completion of homework. The homework assignment sheet lists the due dates for each assignment. Homework should be written neatly. When explanations are requested, your answers should be written in good English form. Once each week, usually on Thursdays, you will submit a "Homework Report", consisting of your work on about ten exercises selected from the most recent two or three daily assignments. For the week of an exam, you will submit the Homework Report on Tuesday. The list of exercises for the homework report is in the homework assignment sheet. If you include more exercises than listed, please circle the official exercises that are due. Only selected exercises on your homework report will be graded. If you visit the office of your instructor or TA , please bring your homework reports with you. We can help you better when we see how your homework is written.
     At the top of each Homework Report, write your name, section number, the date, and the homework report number. The papers must be stapled or placed in a binder. Loose papers cannot be accepted. Also, late homework reports will not be accepted. If you expect to miss a recitation class, you may give your report to a classmate to turn in. A missing report counts as zero, unless it is excused and not counted. If you fail to submit a report on time, please write a note to your TA that explains the circumstances. If the TA or Instructor feels that the excuse is reasonable (such as for illness or participation in university athletics), the report will be "excused" and not counted. One homework report (with the lowest grade) for each student will be dropped automatically, in addition to reports, if any, that have been excused. Most reports will be graded on the basis of 15 or 20 points, depending on the amount of material covered by the assignment. At the end of the semester, your total score will be converted to a percentage.

Tutor Center:    If you have questions about the text or exercises in the text, you can get detailed help from a Tutor Center provided by the textbook publisher. Help with MATLAB for this course is also available. The Tutor Center is staffed by qualified college instructors (with a Ph.D. or M.A. degree in math or science) from 5 pm to midnight, on Sunday through Thursday. You may call 1-888-777-0463 to speak with a tutor, or you may send your questions by email to tutor@aw.com. Each telephone call to the Center is limited to fifteen minutes, but you can make up to three calls a night.
     For more information, go to http://www.aw.com/tutorcenter and click on Student Information. If you have both a phone and an internet connection, you can call the Center and make an appointment for an interactive online conference with a tutor. For details, go to the Tutor Center website and click on Interactive Web.
     The first time you contact the Tutor Center, you will need to supply the following information: (1) the textbook ISBN number (0-201-70970-8), and (2) a registration number (found on the white card inside The Tutor Center envelope that came with your textbook). If you bought a used text, you can use a credit card to purchase a registration number from the Tutor Center.

MATLAB:   The computer software MATLAB will be used throughout the course. The few commands we use in this course will be easy to learn. The Study Guide contains all you need to know about using MATLAB. An "Introduction to MATLAB" is in the first Appendix in the Guide, followed by an index of useful commands. At appropriate points in the course, the Guide also explains how to use special MATLAB programs that have been designed for this course. The programs themselves, along with data files for all the numerical exercises in the text, are on the WAM and Glue installations of MATLAB and in the OWL lab in the basement of the math building.

Grading:   The final grade will be based on 800 points: four hour exams at 100 points each, quizzes 100 points, homework 100 points, and final exam 200 points.
     Letter-grade cutoff scores will be announced after each exam, and the sum of the various cutoff scores (including those for homework and the final exam) will be added to produce the total cutoffs for the course.  Based on 800 points, the cutoff scores typically are: 720 (A), 640 (B), 560 (C), and 480 (D).

Email Messages:   If you are having some difficulty with the course, please see me as soon as possible during office hours. If that is not possible, contact me and we'll make an appointment for some other time. If you write, please include your course number and section in the message header (such as "MATH240-0111"). Because I receive hundreds of emails, I only have time to sort and read messages from students that include this information. Also, I may not have time to respond to some simple email questions whose answers can be found by other means. For example, if you want to know what material is on an exam or where the final exam will be given, you should copy that information from the board when written in the lecture, and check your WebCT page. If you miss a class for personal reasons, you should get the notes from another student in the class and check WebCT. Of course, if you are missing class for an extended time (such as illness or other serious problem), you should contact me as soon as possible.

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You may send your comments and questions to: David Lay  lay@math.umd.edu

Last Revised:  August 29, 2003