Math 131 Section 03 & 08 Syllabus

 

Course Title: Calculus I

Course Number: Math131-03&08

Instructor, Office, Email

Instructor: Jinguo Lian

Office: LGRT(1028)

E-mail: lian@math.umass.edu

Class Schedule and Location

Calculus I 03 (MWF 11:15am - 12:05 pm, Location: LGRT 219)

Calculus I 08 (MWF 10:10 - 11:00 am, Location: LGRT 219)

Office hours

MWF 2:30-3:30pm by an appointment.

Prerequisites

High school algebra I and II, Trigonometry, Plane geometry and Pre-calculus (Analytic geometry).

Required materials

Textbook: (1) Register WebAssign and eBook through the Moodle course. WebAssign access and eBook together are built within your Moodle course, as long as students register into and access WebAssign through their Moodle accounts, they can do homework and view the eBook directly through WebAssign within their Moodle course.  The first time student access the MATH 131 course and WebAssign through their Moodle accounts, they will be prompted to either create a WebAssign/Cengage account with a Username and Password or enter their existing Cengage login credentials if they already have a Cengage account.  Moving forward, every other time students access WebAssign through their Moodle accounts, they will not be prompted to enter in their login credentials and they will be able access WebAssign immediately after clicking on the WebAssign link within their Moodle accounts without providing login credentials.

Students will be directly billed by the university through their Bursar Bill for their WebAssign access for MATH 131.  This ensures that students will have immediate access to WebAssign on the first day of classes and will never be prompted for payment when accessing WebAssign.  After students register into WebAssign they will have full term access.  Students will be billed $61.07 for WebAssign for this course.  This charge will appear prior to the start of the semester as part of the regular Bursar Bill.  After add/drop bills are reconciled—if a student drops the course the charge is removed or if a new student adds the course the bill is updated with that charge.  (Recommended)

If you really need/want a hard copy of the printed textbook, you may purchase or rent a textbook through the following:

(2) Purchasing Textbook: The eBook is available within WebAssign which you can access through your Moodle account/course, but if students want to purchase a printed bound textbook, they can through one of these hyperlinks below:

Single Variable Calculus: Early Transcendentals9th Edition(covers MATH 131 & 132)

Calculus: Early Transcendentals9th Edition (comprehensive text covers MATH 131, 132, & 233)

Within SPIRE, students will also have the option of purchasing a loose-leaf printed version of the comprehensive textbook, Calculus: Early Transcendentals 9e, for $46.55.

(3) Renting Printed: Students also have the option of renting the printed text through their WebAssign/Cengage accounts after they register into WebAssign:


 

Calculator

A graphing calculator may be useful for the Webassign online homework. There is no calculator allowed in any exams. If you never have one, then we recommend you to buy TI-89, you may see the online tutoring about TI-89 at http://www.prenhall.com/esm/app/graphing/ti89/. If you already have a TI series calculator, like TI-83, 84, this should be adequate for the course.

Teaching Assistants                        

Brody Lynch: math131DIS-03AA, 4:00-4:50pm; math131-DIS03AB, 5:30-6:20pm Thursday in LGRT 171, email: lynch@math.umass.edu

Mihail Arabadji: math131DIS-08AA, 5:30-6:20pm; math131-DIS08AB, 2:30-3:20pm Thursday in LGRT 145, email: arabadji@math.umass.edu

 

Description

Math131 is the first in a three-course Calculus sequence Math131–132–233 which covers basic concepts, methods, and applications suitable for majors in engineering, natural sciences, computer science, mathematics, etc. The emphasis is on problem solving instead of on proving theorems. Math 131 mainly studies derivatives of single-variable functions, covering these topics: limits, continuity, derivatives, implicit differentiation, related rates, maxima and minima, and an introduction to definite integrals with applications to area.

Learning Objectives

(1) Become a competent user of differential calculus

(2) Develop problem-solving skills, especially in formulating verbal descriptions as mathematical problems and in constructing long, multi-step solutions.

(3) Develop ability to write well-organized, coherent solutions to problems.

(4) Understand the concept of derivative as representing rate of change and slope.

(5) Know basic differentiation formulas and rules and be adept at computing derivatives of elementary functions symbolically.

(6) Understand the concept of definite integral, especially as representing area and distance, and to be able to approximate a definite integral by Riemann sums.

 

Study Groups

 When you log on the Moodle course, you may see the item “math131 study group self-selection”, where you can organize or join a study group. Group members can work together to do homework. I encourage that you should join a study group to discuss homework questions, course materials and formulas, which may help you understand material better, and be a quick path to catch up the course.

Course Requirements

Attend classes and discussion section regularly, complete in-class exercises/quizzes and teamwork.

Log on Moodle course to complete assigned Webassign homework and reading on time.

Attend exam review sessions and practice past exams.

Take two mid-semester exams and final exam.

 Weekly Schedule

The following is meant to give a general idea of which sections are covered in which weeks. Coverage may be different depending on such factors as MWF vs. TuTh schedule, different paces of individual instructors, etc. However, it is expected that all these sections will be covered.

Week

Lecture

Events

Memo

Sept 1

Intro, 2.1

First lecture is on Wednesday, Sept 1

 

Sept 6

2.2-2.3

Monday Holiday-Libor Day, Wednesday is Monday schedule; Wednesday 9/8 is last day to add/drop

 

Sept 13

2.4-2.6

   

Sept 20

2.7-2.8,3.1

 

 

Sept 27

review, 3.2

Exam 1 Wednesday Sept 29,7-9pm       Make-up exam :Tuesday Sept 28,7-9pm

Exam 1 covers Chapter 2

Oct 4

3.3-3.4

 

return exam 1 to students

Oct 11

3.5-3.6

  Monday is Holiday-Columbia day

 

Oct 18

3.7-3.9

   

Oct 25

3.10, 4.1 -4.2

 Last day to Drop with ‘W’ and select 'P/F' - Undergraduate, is Thursday Oct. 28

 

Nov 1

Review-4.3(start)

 Exam 2 Wednesday Nov 3, 7-9pm; Make-up exam: Tuesday, Nov 2,7-9pm

 Exam 2 covers Chapter 3

Nov 8

4.3(end)

 Thursday, Nov 11 is Veterans' Day

return exam 2 to students

Nov 15

 4.4, 4.7

 

 

Nov 22

4.9

 Tuesday is Thursday class schedule.  Thanksgiving  Recess begins after end of classes of Tuesday

 

Nov 29

5.1-5.2

   

Dec 6

Review

  Last class, Wednesday 12/8

 

Dec 10-16

Final Exam Period, Final exam covers entire materials

Final grade is due by midnight Wednesday, 12/22

Your grade will be posted on SPIRE.

 Course information and communication

Log on the Moodle course where you may find printable syllabus, PDF notes and homework. If you have any questions, you may drop by my office hours or send me an email to schedule an appointment.

Weights of Individual Assignments toward final grade

Teamwork: There are an in-class written teamwork every class. I will collect one teamwork per week. The collected teamwork (about 10-collected teamwork in fall semester) will be 10% of final grading.

Homework: All students require the webassign online homework system, which you may self-enroll the online homework system through the Moodle course. Please watch the instruction video at https://startstrong.cengage.com/webassign-moodle-ia-yes/, and then register WebAssign through your Moodle account to do homework or study ebook there. You can do homework with others, but you have to enter answers yourself. There is no make-up for homework unless there is some certified special accommodation from disability service center or if there is a medical reason, then you have to provide a medical professional's statement.  . Homework will be 15% of final grading.

Discussion section: You should attend discussion sections regularly, take in-class written quizzes, the total discussion section quizzes will be 10% of final grading.

Midterms: we will hold two 2-hour midterms with 5~7 handwritten questions per exam. Each midterm will be 20% of final grading.

Final Exam: we will hold a 2-hour final with 5~7 questions in total. The final exam will be 25% of final grading.

Past Exams: Please practice the following past exams:

Fall 2019 Exam1    Fall 2020 Exam 1

Fall 2019 Exam 2    Fall 2020 Exam 2

Fall 2019 Final Exam      Fall 2020 Final Exam

Grading Scale

All math131 sections must follow the universal grading policy to determine a student's total score. For your total scores: each of Exam1 and Exam 2 is 20%, the final exam is 25%, online homework is 15%, discussion section 10%, and class participation (teamwork) 10%. If your final exam score exceeds the average of your Exam 1 and Exam 2 scores, then your final exam will count 30% (instead of 25%) and each of Exams 1 and 2 will count only 17.5% (instead of 20%).  The course letter-grade scale without round:

A

A−

B+

B

B−

C+

C

C−

D+

D

F

90

87

83

79

75

71

67

63

59

55

<55

For example, since 90-100 is A and 87-90 is A- this means 89.999 still an A- and not rounded up to a 90.000 which is an A.

Exam Policy

All three exams are closed book; there is no calculator allowed in any exams; Exam dates and materials covered are listed in the weekly schedule, which are the same for all lecture sections of the course. All exams are written exams. Be sure to bring your Umass student ID card and any other exam allowed supplies (like pens, pencils and erasers) when you attend the Exam. All of students must take the regular exam unless you are qualified to take an official make-up exam that has been permitted by your instructor, which follows procedure of make-up request. As long as an exam has been taken, it can NOT be retaken.

Make-up request: All of students should check your travel plan and exam schedules of your courses carefully. If you have any schedule conflicts, you should hand in a written request with your name, student ID, section number, brief reason and an official support document to your instructor at least two weeks before the exam. Then your instructor will collect all make-up requests and report a whole list to course chair, the course chair will reserve a classroom for the make-up exam based on the total number of requests, so any late requests will be refused by course chair. The course chair assistant will notify you when and where to take the make-up exam in a few days before the exam.

Which case and where is the official support document for the make-up request?

(1)if you have an exam (or a class) schedule conflicts with the regular exam, you should contact

Office of University Registrar

213 Whitmore Administration Building,

University of Massachusetts,

181 Presidents Drive Amherst, MA 01003-9313

8:00am - 5:00pm Monday through Friday

 

to get an "evening exam conflicts form" as the official document or take a snapshot of your course schedule on SPIRE and send it to your instructor with a written request.

 (2) if you have a university travel for university business during the regular exam date, like an athletic competition or academic conference etc., you should ask your supervisor or your coach to write an explanation letter including his/her phone number to your instructor as the official written document. Your instructor may verify the event by phone call.

(3) if you have a religious observance on regular exam date and can NOT take the exam, you should write an explanation letter yourself and attach the invitation letter or relevant information as the official document.

(4) if you have a medical reason and can not take the regular exam, you should ask a medical professional's statement including his/her phone number which indicate that you were unable for medical reason to take the scheduled exam. If the medical professional's statement is not given before the exam, you instructor may refuse your make-up request.

 Accommodation Statement

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is committed to providing an equal educational opportunity for all students.  If you have a documented physical, psychological, or learning disability on file with Disability Services (DS), you may be eligible for reasonable academic accommodations to help you succeed in this course.  If you have a documented disability that requires an accommodation, please notify your instructor within the first two weeks of the semester so that we may make appropriate arrangements.

Special accommodation request: new disability students should be certified by Umass disability service center (DSC) at first, then you should ask DSC to send the special accommodation documents to your instructor at least one week before exam 1 or exam 2, then you may contact DSC,

Trisha Link
Exam Proctoring Coordinator
examsaccess@admin.umass.edu
413-545-0892
169A Whitmore

directly to schedule an appointment, DSC will notify you when and where to take the exam in a few days before the exam . For the documented disability students, DSC will notify you when you should schedule the final exam in DSC.

 Contingency plan

Before the semester, please test the technology that we use. If you have a difficulty to access the Moodle, please contact UMass OIT support https://www.umass.edu/it/support.

Gradescope: you will need a gradescope account with www.gradescope.com for submission of written team quizzes. If do not have a Gradescope account yet, please create one at www.gradescope.com . Our Course Entry Code is: xxxxx. Please be sure that your name, email address, and UMass Student ID # are entered.

Help

The best way to get help is to drop by my office hours, post your questions to Moodle forum, or send me an email at lian@math.umass.edu to schedule an appointment.

Drops, Withdrawals, and Incompletes

The last day to drop with no record, or to submit a Pass/Fail option, is Wednesday, Sep. 8. If you intend to drop, please do so as soon as possible; others may be waiting to enroll in the section. The last day to drop with a W is Thursday, Oct. 28.

An Incomplete is possible only if: (1) you had a compelling personal reason, e.g., serious illness; (2) your work has clearly been passing; and (3) there is a good chance you'll complete the course with a passing grade within the allotted time. Thus, failing work is no reason in itself for an Incomplete.

Academic Honesty Statement

Since the integrity of the academic enterprise of any institution of higher education requires honesty in scholarship and research, academic honesty is required of all students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Academic dishonesty is prohibited in all programs of the University. Academic dishonesty includes but is not limited to cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, and facilitating dishonesty. Appropriate sanctions may be imposed on any student who has committed an act of academic dishonesty. Instructors should take reasonable steps to address academic misconduct. Any person who has reason to believe that a student has committed academic dishonesty should bring such information to the attention of the appropriate course instructor as soon as possible. Instances of academic dishonesty not related to a specific course should be brought to the attention of the appropriate department Head or Chair. Since students are expected to be familiar with this policy and the commonly accepted standards of academic integrity, ignorance of such standards is not normally sufficient evidence of lack of intent (http://www.umass.edu/dean_students/codeofconduct/acadhonesty/).

General Education Designation

 MATH 131 is a four-credit General Education course that satisfies the R1 (Basic Math Skills) and R2 (Analytic Reasoning) general education requirements for graduation.

The General Education Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst offers students a unique opportunity to develop critical thinking, communication, and learning skills that will benefit them for a lifetime. For more information about the General Education Program, please visit the GenEd web page.

 Learning Outcomes for all General Education courses

 Math 131 satisfies the following General Education objectives:

  Content:  Know fundamental questions, ideas, and methods of inquiry/analysis used in mathematics: Students will learn limits and continuity of functions, use these to compute rates of change, and analyze their real-life and theoretical applications.

 Critical Thinking: Students demonstrate creative, analytical, quantitative, & critical thinking through inquiry, problem solving, & synthesis: Students will use critical thinking skills to develop and understand rates of change of functions using limits, and computational skills to find these rates of change efficiently. Students will demonstrate an understanding of various methods of differentiation in order to compute the rate of change for many types of functions.

 Communication: Develop informational and technological literacy: Students will develop their writing skills by articulating their reasoning for computations throughout the course.

 Demonstrate capacity to apply disciplinary perspectives and methods of analysis to real world problems (the larger society) or other contexts: Students will apply the theoretical concepts of calculus to real-world and theoretical problems.  Students will use the derivative to find where a function reaches is maximum and minimum values, and apply this to various contexts such as finding the maximum height of an object travelling through the air.

 Learning Outcomes for the R1 and R2 Designations

 Because Math 131 presupposes basic math skills, it carries the designation for the Basic Math Skills requirement (R1). In addition, the course satisfies the following objectives of the Analytic Reasoning requirement (R2):

Advance a student’s formal or mathematical reasoning skills beyond the level of basic competence:  In learning Calculus in Math 131, students will think critically about the overarching idea of rates of change.  Students will advance their mathematical literacy and analyzing skills by learning to limits of mathematical functions and using these limits to construct accurate and efficient ways of computing rates of change, called derivatives.

 Increase the student’s sophistication as a consumer of numerical information:  Students will connect the ideas of rates of change to various disciplines by analyzing and solving problems in both real life and theoretical applications.

 Indicate the limits of formal, numerical, quantitative, or analytical reasoning and discuss the potential for the abuse of numerical arguments:  Students will learn methods of both estimating and computing cumulative change.  Students will analyze when it is appropriate to use an estimation, as well as the accuracy and efficiency of their estimations.