Greetings. Welcome to Math 20E, Lecture A. I am your Dedicated Servant Teaching Assistant, Chris Tiee. Here's the essential information.
Instructor: Avi Berman
Office: Applied Physics and Math (AP&M) 5240
Email: aberman@math.ucsd.edu
Office Hours: MWF
Lecture Times & Location: MWF 10:00a-10:50a, Center Hall 119
Prerequisites: Math 20C
Textbook: Vector Calculus, 5th Edition by Jerrold E. Marsden and Anthony J. Tromba
I also recommend: Div, Grad, Curl and All That: An Informal Introduction to Vector Calculus by Harry Schey but this is completely optional. Also check out Schaum's Outline on Vector Analysis. Lots of solved problems in there.
TA: Chris Tiee
Office: AP&M 6349A
Email: ctiee@math.ucsd.edu
Office Hours: Tu 2-4, W 1-2, F 1-2 (tentative), and by appointment
Discussion Times & Location:
A01:
A02:
A03:
A05:
Note: No TA is assigned for A04 and A06. Attendance of sections is not mandatory and you may attend any section A01-A03 and A05. Please be sure to write your official enrolled section on your homework, however; this helps keeps things better organized.
Jump to Homework.
6/07/05 10pm
I resolved the grading issue: the 25% Midterm option in two of the grading policies is the better midterm grade. This will help you, of course. See the options listed in the 6/03 update below (I've removed the "I'm not sure"). The average will be a B-. The finals look... let's just say, from what I've seen so far, that if you were worried about your grade, you don't need to be so worried... Unfortunately, however, we're not going to present the 5th option to "drop the final," as some of you have requested, hehehe.
6/03/05 2pm
The final will be on Tuesday 6/07 (at 8am, unfortunately). I will be holding office hours on Monday 6/06 officially from 2-4 (you can also pick up your second midterm there). However I'll be available for the rest of the day (e.g. if anyone has finals at those hours) so send me an email in advance if you plan to come outside of that time frame. As for recommendations of what to study, there is an excellent list of formulas used in surface integration on pp. 496-497 of the book. Also I have a review sheet (it was for the midterm in the 20E class I did last quarter) which gives an overview of line and surface integration, in general and with examples. Hopefully this should clear up the rather arduous step-by-step process of surface integration.
We've set up some additional grading schemes for the course and the plan is the take the best of 4 possible ways of computing the score. The plan is to grade the best of:
1) The original scheme as detailed in "Structure of The Class" below (10% Homework, 20% Each Midterm, 50% Final)
2) Greater weight on the final (10% Homework, 25% better midterm score, 65% Final)
3) Dropping the homework score, so (10/9) x (20% each midterm, 50% Final)
4) Dropping the homework plus greater weight on final, (10/9) x (25% better midterm, 65% Final)
(the factor of 10/9 compensates for everything adding up to only 90% without having to put 22.2222...%).
6/02/05 11pm
I have your midterms. Stop by my office to pick them up. The mean was 64.6, median 65, and standard deviation 18.2. #1 was fairly straightforward; #2 was somewhat more difficult, and the question was ambiguous in the sense that I didn't know whether it wanted you to just quote "equality of mixed partials" or actually prove equality of mixed partials (which many people attempted). A rather surprising number of people insisted that the curl is always zero and hence part c) was trivial---that would be silly since, why bother defining curl if it's always going to be zero? I was fairly lenient with the #3 on Fubini's theorem, since the book's statement of the most general form probably does more harm than good for understanding. It was sufficient to say that if "f is continuous" or "the discontinuities of f do not exist." Also #4 was mostly tedious evaluation that threw people off. The really important part was the setting up of the bounds, so I gave 20 points out of 25 for 3 lines, and 5 points for the 285 other lines that constituted the evaluation, if it was correct.
5/16/05 5pm
The midterm will be on this Friday 5/20, covering material up through multiple integration. I shall be taking a qualifying exam on 5/20, and another on Wed. 5/25. Therefore office hours on Fri 5/20 and Wed. 5/25 will be cancelled. Please take advantage of Tuesday office hours this week and next. This timing unfortunately means realistically speaking, I will not be able to return your midterms before the drop deadline, 5/27. If you feel your situation is dire (and I really mean dire, e.g. it will be the difference between passing and failing, or your financial aid will depend on it, but not, say, you're threatening to drop the class to avoid a B+), please inform me of your situation so I can grade your exam relatively early (and let you know your result via email or in office hours on 5/27).
4/29/05 10pm
Prof. Berman is now looking over your tests; you will get them back in lecture Monday rather than in section. People did generally well; the mean was 77.4, median 80.5, standard deviation 13.88. Of course you may not care for bare numerical statistics, so I'll be a little more dramatic by showing a chart:
Also, I made a typo in the homework, Section 2.5 should have 27 and 28 instead of 22.
4/27/05 6pm
Good news and bad news. Good news: I've gotten my computer back so updates should be more timely. Bad news: I've been grading your midterms. Ok kidding, not so bad news. Grading has gone pretty well and it looks like you did pretty well. It was easier than I myself was expecting. It looks like most people knew how to do computations, but didn't really know the material that well conceptually, as evidenced by the number of people who did really well on all problems except for #1. But this is (supposed to be) a more computation-based class anyway so it is nothing to feel too bad about. Finally I have posted homework not just for this week but next week as well.
My usual computer is broken and in the repair shop so I have to resort to brute-force HTML editing on a different computer to update this; sorry for the delays on my part. Homework 2 (sections 1.4, 1.5, 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3) is due on Monday. I now know the professor's office hours and shall go to his office hours to get the homeworks weekly from now on. If you have questions please send them along to me if it's anything urgent. Homework 3 will not be due until 4/29 because of the midterm on 4/22.
I will hold A05 weekly from now on. Anyone reading this page should help spread the word.
I still haven't heard any news from the professor about what the remaining homework should be for this week. So far, 1.4 and 1.5 have been assigned, so this will be due on Friday for sure. There is some discrepancy among sections as to which problems are assigned so if I put up something wrong, please notify me at ctiee@math.ucsd.edu (note the change; ctiee@ucsd.edu is forwarded to my home internet; I just recently found out, much to my dismay, that half my messages, including some very important ones, were being flagged as spam and completely withheld).
As for the A04-A06 situation, this is your last chance to speak up! (I've gotten only 5 out of 14 responses so far, and that's counting the the ones I recovered from my "spam box." I have one vote for A05, one for A04, and 3 "don't cares" which isn't helping much. Also only one person showed up to A04 last week so it seems the word isn't getting out... I will be making a decision tomorrow (Tues) night
Some people are worried whether or not to change sections because tomorrow is the deadline. However as I've said before, you don't need to attend the section you're actually enrolled in. So even if we decide on, say, A04 next week, you don't have to bother with StudentLink. The decision on when to have a 4th section is just so I know when to show up regularly for the rest of the quarter.
4/07/05 2am
I mentioned this in the email to A04-A06 students, but I'll mention again that I will be actually holding the A04 section today (but I can't stick around for A05-A06) so if as many people as possible could come to A04, we can decide on the matter of when to hold a fourth section for the rest of the quarter (plus if anyone in A01-A03 wants to enroll or come to a later section your input is also welcome!).
I've sent a notice to all students in A04-A06 regarding officially reinstating one of them. If you have not received an email regarding this (I've sent them to your email addresses as reported on the class roster which in turn comes from what shows up as your email in StudentLink), please send me email ctiee@ucsd.edu from the account that you use regularly.
Webpage is (finally) up. Check here regularly for updates.
First discussion. Hi! Homework 1 assigned.
We will be covering most of the textbook (skipping parts of Chapter 3 on min/max problems, and the later advanced material in chapter 8). Chapters 1 and 2 are mostly review.
UCSD Catalog Description: Math 20E. Vector Calculus. Change of variable in multiple integrals, Jacobian Line integrals, Green's theorem. Vector fields, gradient fields, divergence, curl. Spherical and cylindrical coordinates.
Grading & Exams: Your grade will be based on the following:
Homework: 10%
Midterms: 20%
Final: 50%
Midterm 1 is scheduled to take place on
Personal Philosophy of the Class: In effort to bore the reader as much as possible, I shall state my feelings about this class. First off, vector calculus is an extremely cool, interesting, and even beautiful subject. I'm not kidding... You may think I am crazy (a true fact, but for entirely different reasons). Many of the laws of nature can be described by in terms of vector fields, their derivatives, and integrals. Consequently, this should be very useful to those of you who are planning to be engineers or physicists (and more recently, computer game programmers). There are also many deep connections of this stuff to other branches of mathematics, but unfortunately, if you're a budding math student, you are not likely to see and understand those connections it until graduate school, and consequently you will be, paradoxically, much more likely than your physicist and engineer peers to forget the material in this course after you're done (try taking differential geometry, the Math 150 series, as soon as possible).
My goal is to try to get you to get a feel for all this stuff, so that you don't feel like you're just pushing around symbols. Vector calculus has a somewhat undeserved reputation for being "hard." I'm not entirely sure how it gets this reputation, but I suspect it has to do with the intimidating nature of the new notations one encounters such as multiple integrals (actually the integral sign is one of my favorites; I've always been fond of cool notation), and that it involves 3-D stuff which is harder to visualize. While it's useful to have the ability to actually visualize these abstract 3-D objects and rotate them in their heads and so forth, it's not absolutely necessary to do well in this course. Also it is a skill you can develop; just because you can't do it now doesn't mean you can't do it ever. Getting an intuitive idea of this stuff is not necessarily the same as having elite visualization skills (iREET ViSu@|_][Z4ti0n SkiLLz). After all, some of these things generalize to n-dimensional space for n > 3, in which these things are impossible to visualize. People applying vector calculus get along fine using n-dimensional calculus.
Homework will be assigned each week. Though it is worth only 10% of your grade, you should do it, because it's good practice for the midterm. It will be due the following week in Thursday section (preferable, to keep things organized) or in the homework drop box by my office AP&M 6349 by 3pm on Friday, for your convenience. There are two boxes on the wall; mine is the left box, second column, and second slot from the bottom (you'll see 20E and my name on it).
I encourage people to work together on homeworks, and definitely come to office hours to discuss these problems (I don't have any office-mates, so I get lonely). While I will try to do problems in section, as the course progresses to harder and more important concepts, I will be spending more time talking about these things. So please make use of office hours; importantly, don't be shy (I have been heartbroken three times on account of that, three times too many). Don't just "copy" homework or take my solutions and run with them--the goal, remember, is to try to understand what's going on. After all, I can't be there to take your midterms and final for you. Finally, I refer you to my Links Page for other sources of help.
Finally, a frequent complaint last quarter was that I would "never finish" a problem, but rather reduce many problems to things that can be done using Math 20B. I would often joke "To finish this off, bribe your friends in 20B." I don't do these in section simply because they can be tedious, time-consuming, and beside the point. Plus I simply won't get through enough material if I dwell on a complete, shiny solution. If you would really like to see a problem worked out in detail as such (it still is good practice), please come to my office instead. You will receive the bulk of the credit for exam problems for proper setup (this is essentially the point of the class, as this is what requires the conceptual understanding), not final answers.
All homework is from the main textbook unless otherwise specified.
Week 1 (3/28-4/1)
Section 1.1: 18, 22, 26
Section 1.2: 15, 16, 21
Section 1.3: 21, 29, 34
Due 4/08/05 3pm in box
Week 2 (4/4-4/8)
Section 1.4: 4, 12 (*changed)
Section 1.5: 2, 13, 15
Section 2.1: 15, 29
Section 2.3: 4, 8, 10
Section 2.2: 12, 14, 26 (These involve limits and "epsilon-delta" style proofs, which can be very confusing and are best learned in Math 140, Analysis. Do not unduly stress yourself out on these problems! Problems like this will not, for example, show up on the midterm. My suggestion is to just try to get a feel for limits of functions of 2 and 3 variables; in particular you should know that it is not sufficient to show a limit exists by taking a 1-D limit along a convenient path. On the other hand, that is sufficient to disqualify the existence of a limit: take two different paths and show that they're different. However to actually compute a limit, it is legal to try to show it by some convenient means and then justify it using epsilon-delta.)
Due **Monday**,
Section 2.4: 3, 11, 18
Section 2.5: 8, 12, 13, 27, 28 (updated, typo last time; do these instead of 22)
Section 2.6: 2, 3, 16
Section 3.1: 9, 12, 18
Due Monday 5/2/05 3pm
Section 3.2: 2, 3, 6
Section 4.2: 4, 19
Section 4.3: 14, 18
Section 4.4: 10, 16, 26
Due Friday 5/6/05 3pm
Section 5.1: 1, 4
Section 5.2: 5, 6
Section 5.3: 2, 6
Section 5.4: 2, 8
Section 5.5: 4, 15, 16
Due Friday 5/13/05 3pm
Section 6.1: 6, 8,
Section 6.2: 6, 8, 23
Section 7.1: 2, 15
Section 7.2: 2, 16
Section 8.1: 3, 16
Due Tuesday 5/31/05 5pm (after office hours)
Section 7.3: #2, 6
Section 7.4: #6, 15
Section 7.5: #2, 4
Section 8.2: #3, 10, 14
Section 8.3: #14, 15, 25
(Will not be due; save it as studying or practice for the final)
Questions? Comments? Complaints? Send email to ctiee@ucsd.edu. This page does not represent the views of the numerous institutions I am affiliated with.
