Instructor: Antoine Mellet

Office: Math Building 4104

Classes: MWF 2:00pm- 2:50pm (ARM 0131)

Office Hours: Mon. 3-3:50, Wed. 10-11

First day Hand-out

Discussion Sections

Textbook:

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

Course description:
Basic concepts of linear algebra: vector spaces, applications to line and plane geometry, linear equations and matrices, similar matrices, linear transformations, eigenvalues, determinants and quadratic forms.

Daily schedule/Homework assignments/Quizzes due dates

Blackboard
Management of the course will be conducted with the help of Blackboard. For help with Blackboard (including a student manual), go to http://www.elms.umd.edu . Your Blackboard space has a copy of this syllabus and other material needed for this course.

Exams Dates:

• Midterm 1 (in class): Friday February 20
• Midterm 2 (in class): Friday March 27
• Midterm 3 (in class): Friday May 1
• Final exam: Thursday May 14 1:30-3:30 pm. Check the room assignment (look for your TA's name).
  If you are taking another class with a final exam scheduled at the same time (and only in that case), you will have to take the alternate final exam on Monday May 18th, 1:30-3:30pm in Room TYD 0117.

Online Quizzes:

An important use of Blackboard will be to administer online quizzes, to help you learn the course material. Most quiz questions can be answered by reading the text carefully. (You may find this difficult at first, but in this course and in most math courses that follow it, reading and rereading the text word by word is absolutely essential for success.)

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.

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. Most quizzes will consist of five questions: true/false questions or multiple choice questions (which ask you to decide whether a certain statement is always true, sometimes true, or never true). 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. Blackboard will grade your quiz and display the results, with comments about each question.

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.

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.

It is your responsability to check when quizzes are due. There will be no make up quizzes, but the four lowest quiz grades will be dropped.

Homework is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of class, and even if you think you understand the book/lectures you really don't until you have worked out examples on your own. Success in the course is highly correlated with regular attendance and punctual completion of homework. The lecture schedule/homework assignment sheet lists the due dates for each assignment. Homework should be written neatly and are to be turned in at the end of discussion session on their due date (I recommend doing homework problems daily at the same pace as the lectures).
You may consult other students regarding your homework, but the final write-up should be done on your own (in other words, no copying). Copying solutions from each other violates University of Maryland, College Park's Code of Academic Integrity and is strictly prohibited.
You must write your name, and section number at the top of each homework. The papers must be stapled or placed in a binder. Loose papers cannot be accepted. If you expect to miss a discussion session, you may give your homework to a classmate to turn in.
NO LATE HOMEWORK WILL BE ACCEPTED. However, the two lowest homework grades will be dropped.

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 an "Introduction to MATLAB" in the first Appendix, followed by an index of useful commands. 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 available on the WAM and Glue installations of MATLAB and in the OWL lab in the basement of the math building. If you have your own copy of MATLAB, you can download the special programs and text data from the web, at http://www.laylinalgebra.com.

For information on software, tutoring and computer labs locations and hours, see the Math. Dept. resources page (check in particular the Matlab tutoring schedule and the computer labs location )
Homework problems requiring the use of Matlab are marked [M] in the book. Such problems, when assigned, will almost always be graded.
You may use the DIARY command to creat a record of your work that you can print out (Note that you can edit the diary file to add some comments if necessary).

For instructions on how to access Matlab from your own computer, you can consult the following web page (courtesy of Prof. Wyss-Gallifent): http://www.math.umd.edu/~jow/misc/matlab.html

Grading Scheme:

Midterm 1		15%
Midterm 2		15%
Midterm 3		15%
Homework		15%
Quizzes		10%
Final		30%