Syllabus
MAP 2302, section 5351
Elementary Differential Equations
Fall 2000--MWF 8th period--Little Hall 127

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Professor David Groisser
418 Little Hall
392-0281 extension 261
groisser@math.ufl.edu

Office Hours: Tentatively Monday and Wednesday 5th period, Friday 4th period. Please come early in the period or let me know to expect you later. See my schedule for updates. You can also see me by appointment any weekday except Thursday .

Text: Nagle, Saff, and Snider, Fundamentals of Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems, 3nd edition. We will cover chapters 1-4 and 6-7, with some omissions.

Homework will be assigned daily and is due by the next class, but I will not collect it. Instead, roughly once a week, usually on Wednesdays, there will be quizzes taken directly from recent homework. Whether there will be a quiz on a given Wednesday is a surprise. I will not tell anyone in advance whether there's going to be a quiz on a specific day, even if the answer would affect whether that person would be out of town that day. Keep up with the homework daily; it would usually be a grave mistake to wait until Tuesday to start doing the homework that was due the previous Friday and Monday. Assignments and due dates will be posted on the homework web page.You are responsible for checking this page frequently, since the dates more than one day in advance are estimates and there will be frequent updates. Assignments may also be modified in class according to how far we get on a given day.

Grading. Your final grade will be determined by

• Three midterms (hour exams), each counting 17% of final grade. Tentative dates for the midterms are Sept. 20 (Wed.), Oct. 16 (Mon.), and Nov. 15 (Wed.).
• Homework quizzes, totalling 16% of final grade.
• Cumulative final exam, counting 33% of final grade. This will be given in this room on Wed., Dec. 13, beginning at 7:30 a.m.

I reserve the right to adjust the percentages above in individual cases if I feel that circumstances warrant.

There will be no make-up midterms or make-up quizzes. If you have a valid reason for missing a midterm, I will re-adjust the weights of your other miderms.

See more about grading below for additional information.

Attendance bonus. If your attendance is good enough, I will drop your worst quiz. To qualify for this drop, you have to have no more than three absences for the whole semester. If you have more than three absences, but can document that ALL of these were for valid reasons, such as illness, I'll excuse your absences and drop your worst quiz. If you have more than three absences, and ANY of them is unexcused, I won't drop a quiz.

• Do not mistakenly think you have three ``free'' absences! Example: Early in the semester you miss a class to study for an exam in another class, or to go home to see your family. Later in the semester an illness or family emergency requires you to miss three more classes. Because you now have four absences, one of which is unexcused, you are ineligible to drop a quiz.

• Being late counts as being absent. (I'll usually start taking attendance before the bell rings, to allow for maximum teaching time. ``Late'' means you enter the room after the bell rings [assuming the bell is working] or after I'm done taking attendance, whichever comes later.)

• If you miss a quiz, it counts as a 0. (But this 0 is eligible for your dropped quiz if your attendance is good enough.) Exception: if at semester's end the weighted average of your midterms and final exams is at least 95%, and you have not missed any of these exams, I will only count the quizzes you actually took.

For further information, see Attendance: frequently asked questions . I believe the attendance policy is fair. If you disagree, please re-read the above web page before telling me why you think the policy is unfair (e.g. if you didn't like being marked absent when you were only a little late).

More about quizzes and exams. The quizzes (not the longer exams!) will be taken directly from homework. If you have done all your homework you will never see a new problem on a quiz. However, midterm and final exam problems will often be more difficult than quiz problems! Most exam problems will be similar to homework, but on most exams I try to put at least one problem that you won't have seen a clone of before. Such problems will involve no new concepts , but may, for example, combine concepts from different parts of the syllabus. I do this to see whether you've gone beyond memorizing a bunch of formulas and rules, and have achieved a real understanding of the material--which you'll need for an A.

More about grading. I don't have a predetermined grade curve or predetermined percentages for letter grades. I decide the grade scale for each exam and homework according to the philosophy A = excellent, B = good, C = satisfactory, D = unsatisfactory but passing. At the end of the semester, I use the cutoffs from the exams and homework and to determine the final grade cutoffs on a 1000-point scale. For example if the cutoff for a B is 80% on the quizzes, 72% on the first hour exam, 69% on the second hour exam, 76% on the third hour exam, and 74% on the final, to get a B for the course you'd need (.16 x 80% ) + .17 x (72%+69%+76%) + (.33 x 74%) = 74.1% of the total number of points in the course, i.e. 741/1000.

Since I don't determine the exam-grade cutoffs ahead of time, I can't tell you in advance exactly how many points you'll need to get a particular grade for the course. However, at any point in the semester I will be able to tell you what grade you're running up to that date. For purposes of comparison, the last time I taught this class (fall 1999) the final grade cutoffs (ignoring "plus" grades) were:
A 868/1000, B 758/1000, C 609/1000, D 495/1000. Out of 23 graded students, there were 6 A's, 8 B's, 6 C's, 2 D's, and 1 E. The class GPA was 2.83.

Miscellaneous:

• Unless I say otherwise, you are responsible for knowing any material I cover in class, any subject covered in homework, and all the material in the textbook chapters we are studying.

• If you miss class the day I return an exam, you'll have one week to pick your quiz or exam up from my office, after which I may discard your paper.

• Class will meet the day before Thanksgiving. Make your travel plans early. It is not an excused absence if you miss class because the "only" (or least expensive) way to get where you are going is via transportation that leaves before our class ends.