Instructor: Assistant Professor Pete L. Clark, Ph.D., pete (at) math (dot) uga (dot) edu
Course webpage: http://www.math.uga.edu/~pete/MATH2200F09.html (i.e., right here)
Office Hours: Boyd 502, TuTh 2-3 pm, and by appointment
Course Text (required): Calculus, Early Transcendentals, Custom UGA Edition, by
C. Edwards and D. Penney.
Grading Scheme:
Midterm A (your highest scoring midterm): 20%
Midterm B: 15%
Midterm C: 15%
Final Exam: 30%
Webwork Based Homework: 15%
Other (e.g. attendance, participation, extra homework): 5%
The departmental syllabus for Math 2200 is available
here.
Midterm information: There will be three midterm exams, roughly at about the 5th, 9th and 13th weeks of the semester. The exams will all take place in class. I will announce the dates at least 2 weeks in advance.
Midterm makeup policy: If you think you will be out of town during a midterm exam, please let me know at least one week in advance of the exam. Generally I will allow you to take a makeup in advance of the scheduled exam. There will be no makeups after the exam. If you miss a midterm for reasons of medical or family emergency, then I will generally excuse you from that exam and compute your grade on that midterm to be the average of the other two midterm exams.
The Mandatorium: I have been informed that all UGA course syllabi must contain the following paragraphs:
As a University of Georgia student, you have agreed to abide by the University’s academic
honesty policy, “A Culture of Honesty,” and the Student Honor Code. All academic work
must meet the standards described in “A Culture of Honesty” found at:
www.uga.edu/honesty. Lack of knowledge of the academic honesty policy is not a
reasonable explanation for a violation. Questions related to course assignments and the
academic honesty policy should be directed to the instructor.
The course syllabus is a general plan for the course; deviations announced to the class by
the instructor may be necessary.
Webwork Information: The webwork page for our course is
Your username is the portion of your uga email address before @uga.edu. No capital letters! Your initial password is your student ID number (no hyphens).
IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION:
It is not your full student ID number but rather the string of 9 digits in the middle beginning with 810. (In other words, omit the first 6 digits and also
the final 0.)
Having trouble dealing with the webwork security certificate problem?
Click here for help.
HOMEWORK
Assignment 1: Due Thursday, August 27th
Webwork: Section 2.1 (Tangent lines)
Comments:
(1) Please just ignore the phrase "slope predictor" which appears in several of the problems.
It is asking about the slope of the tangent line!
(2) Several people wrote to tell me they had difficulty with some of the latter problems in
the set. I will go over a problem like this in class on Tuesday.
COURSE MAILINGS: Below please find copies of all the course emails.
Email #1: sent Wednesday, August 19::
Dear Folks,
This is the first mailing of the course mailing list for the two sections (8am and 12:30 pm) of Math 2200 that I am teaching this semester.
Here is some information for you:
1) Classrooms:
Both classes will be changing rooms, STARTING NEXT TUESDAY. We will be moving to rooms in Boyd Graduate Studies Center...with blackboards. However, BOTH CLASSES ARE MEETING TOMORROW IN THE SAME PLACE THEY MET ON TUESDAY.
2) WebWork: is still not up yet, sorry. (You forgive me, right?) I should have it up by midnight tonight or so. I expect the first assignment will be due on Thursday, August 27th.
3) Email correspondence:
I am teaching three different classes this semster: two sections of 2200 plus one section of Math 3200. (FYI, this is more than I need to teach. It is called "Course Banking" and is what needs to be done at UGA in order to get a sabbatical semester or year later on.) Altogether I have about 105 students. So:
a) It may take me a while to learn your name. Generally I learn the names of the students who send me emails regularly, who come to office hours, who ask lots of questions in class, who do especially well (or, sometimes, especially badly) on tests, and so forth. As a consequence:
b) Don't expect it to be obvious to me who you are when you send an email to me: at first, it definitely won't be. All of your emails to me should include the following information:
(i) Your full name (either at the beginning, the end or both).
By the way, this is a good rule of thumb for email communications in general.
(ii) The fact that you are a student in one of my classes, and which class: at least say whether it's 2200 or 3200, which makes a difference. Between the two 2200 classes, if you need to be specific about which one it is, please say "8 o'clock class" or "12:30 class", or "morning" or "afternoon" or something like that. (The registrar has separate numerical codes for the two sections. I do not plan on memorizing them.) But it may not matter.
(iii) If you are responding to something I said in class or individually to you, a brief heads up on this will be helpful.
4) The Name Game
If I don't hear otherwise from you, I will refer to you by the first of the two names you give me: E.g., if you sign your correspondence "Angelina Jolie" I will call you Angelina. I would be happy to call you Ms. Jolie, Mrs. Jolie, Mrs. Pitt, Grendel's Mother, etc. if you like: please let me know.
Actually, I was kidding about the Grendel's Mother thing: asking me to call you by a name which is different from any of the names which appear on my course rolls is your right, but is a bit confusing.
What to call me: first, in a university environment, to address someone suitably, you need to have some information about their position. A calculus class could be taught by any of the following types of people:
1) A current graduate student in the math department, either the master's or PhD program.
This is what Louis Yang Liu is. I would call him Mr. Liu, but ask him what he prefers.
2) An instructor in the math department. This is, essentially, someone whose responsibilities in the university are limited to teaching undergraduate classes. In theory this is a year-to-year position, although many of the instructors in our department have been here for a long time. They may or may not have a PhD, and they will probably indicate this by asking you to call them "Dr." or not. If they are more than, say, 25 years older than you, you might try calling them "Professor" as a sign of respect, even though this is not technically correct.
3) A post-doctoral fellow. This is a relatively young person -- usually in their late 20's or early 30's -- who has recently completed a PhD at a different university and has a temporary (two to three year) position here. You should start out by calling them "Dr.".
4) A tenure-track or tenured professor. This is someone who necessarily has a PhD, almost surely has completed a postdoc or two somewhere else, and now has a permanent position in the math department at UGA. These are the people who actually run the department and try to chart its future course -- e.g., they are primarily responsible for hiring and curricular decisions in the department.
The custom here at UGA is to call such a person "Dr.", although it seems to me that "Professor X" is both more correct and more respectful (and had vast mental powers until he was disintegrated by Famke Janssen).
(Referring to female instructors: be extra careful to find out whether they have a PhD, and if so definitely call them Dr. or Professor and not "Miss" or "Mrs." Otherwise say "Ms." Many female postdocs and professors find "Mrs. X" offensive. I happen to agree whole-heartedly with this, but even if I didn't, this is about them: you don't want to unintentionally make a bad impression.)
I am a (tenure-track, as yet untenured) professor. Here is my preference for what to call me:
Preferred:
"Pete": This is absolutely fine for most everyday matters. I don't stand on ceremony.
"Professor Clark": This is also nice, and is perhaps to be tried when you're asking for something.
Acceptable:
"Doctor Clark"
To my mind, it is much more prestigious to be a professor at UGA than to have a PhD, so I like Professor better. But as above, Doctor X is sort of the local custom, so that's fine.
Please Avoid:
"Mr. Clark"
This is trying to be respectful and failing. Remember, you're not in high school anymore!
"Sir"
I once taught a course at Concordia University in Montreal, where the local custom is to call male faculty "sir". There was an everpresent whiny undertone which drove me nuts. To quote Homer Simpson: "Just once I wish someone would call me 'sir" without adding, 'You're making a scene.'"
That's all for now.
Email #2: sent very late on Wednesday, August 19:
Dear Folks,
I have just uploaded all of you to the webwork site and enabled the first problem set (which is on Section 2.1 of your book; I haven't found any precalculus stuff on webwork yet).
The webwork site is
https://webwork.math.uga.edu/webwork2/
Please try going there right now. You will find that there is something slightly fishy having to do with the site's security certificate. (I got an explanation for why this was the case from our IT staff, but I didn't really understand it.) Please just go ahead and go the site anyway: nothing bad will happen. (On my computer, Mozilla Firefox automatically declines to send me to the site, whereas Internet Explorer gives me the security certificate screen. If your browser doesn't let you access the site, please let me know right away.)
Your login name is the part of your email address that comes before the @uga. For instance, Ryan Aly's email address is raly1@uga.edu, so his login name is raly1.
Your password is initially set to be your Student ID number. Presumably you can change it to whatever you wish.
At the moment, there should be precisely 1 problem set "active": the one on Section 2.1. Right now please at least make sure that you can get to the problems. When you first load the page the formatting on the problems will not be very good, but you can select a format to your taste. (jsmath seems to work well on my computer).
Of course, please let me know ASAP if you have any problem logging in to the webwork system.
Email #3: sent on Monday, September 21:
Dear Folks,
1) I will have extra office hours today from 1-3 and 5-6 (in Boyd 502).
2) No calculators of any kind will be permitted on tomorrow's exam (or any other exams in this course).
3) The solutions to the practice problems are available on the course webpage.
Best regards,
Pete
Practice Problems for First Midterm Exam:
click here. Solutions:
click here.
Practice Problems for Second Midterm Exam:
click here. Solutions:
click here.
Practice Problems for Third Midterm Exam:
click here. Partial Solutions:
click here.
Here are our three midterm exams, with solutions: