I am a recitation instructor for Robin Pemantle's Math 114 class, lecture section 001 in the fall of 2007.
The lecture for this class is on Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 11 AM to noon in DRL A1.
The recitations for this class are as follows:
You should attend your assigned recitation.
Office hours: Monday from 2 PM to 3 PM, Friday from 10 AM to 11 AM. (See below for end-of-semester information.)
The announcements are in reverse chronological order.
Saturday, December 15 As many of you have noticed, the grades for the final exam and for the course have been posted to Blackboard. The final exam was out of 78 points, and the distribution of scores on the final exam was as follows:
Tuesday, December 11: as you know, the final is tomorrow, Wednesday, December 12, from 9-11 AM, in 350/351 Steinberg-Dietrich Hall. Rooms 350 and 351 are on the ground floor of Steinberg-Dietrich (not the third floor). They are near the Woodland Walk entrance (between 36th and 37th); if you enter Steinberg-Dietrich from Locust Walk you may have trouble finding them.
Friday, December 7: I have posted solutions to Homework 12, including an exact solution to the differential equation y' = y/(y+t), which was not required. If you'd like to get this homework back, please come to my office hours on Monday.
Thursday, December 6: I know of at least two review sessions being held before this exam:
Thursday, December 6: My office hours for the remainder of the semester will be as follows:
Monday, December 3: Here is some more information on the distribution of homework grades. So far there have been ten homework assignments; eight of these were out of 20 points, one out of 30 points, and one out of 10. For each of you, I've taken all your homework grades and added them together, and divided by 200 in the case of those of you who were enrolled in the class from the beginning; some of you were excused from the first one or two homeworks, and I've calculated your grades out of 160 or 180 respectively. The mean grade on the homework is 80.7%, the median is 83.5%, and the standard deviation is 13.5%. The percentage grades on the homework are distributed as follows:
Saturday, November 24: I have posted solutions to Homework 11 and a sketch of a solution to the extra credit on Picard iteration.
Monday, November 19: On the homework due this week, problem 12(b) in section 18.4 asks you to graph something. Although you should do this, don't worry about handing it in. Also, for the problem involving Euler's method, please note that you will need to use the Maple code for Euler's method, available on Dr. Pemantle's web site.
Saturday, November 17: Homework 11 is available on Dr. Pemantle's web site. The stated due date there is Tuesday, November 20. This due date holds for students in Tuesday recitations. For students in Thursday recitations, please hand in the homework by noon on Wednesday, November 21; slip it under my office door (DRL 4N27).
Friday, November 16: I have posted solutions to Homework 10.
Thursday, November 15: The distribution of the exam grades in my sections was as follows:
Tuesday, November 13: Exam grades have been posted on Blackboard. The mean grade for my students was a 41 out of a possible 65. Unofficial letter grades are as follows: 48 or above is an A, 38-47 is a B, 28-37 is a C, 18-27 is a D, 0-17 is an F. Solutions have been posted on Dr. Pemantle's web page.
Saturday, November 10: More logistical announcements:
Thursday, November 8: I have posted solutions to Homework 9.
Thursday, November 8: The exam on Monday is in the auditorium of the Nursing Education Building (also known as Fagin Hall). The building is located at 418 Curie Boulevard; see Google Maps or the UPenn campus map.
Monday, November 5: As promised, I've posted some notes on Euler-Maclaurin summation relating to the double-summation question from Homework 8.
Monday, November 5: Here are some logistical announcements relating to the upcoming exam, on the evening of Monday, November 12:
Thursday, November 1: I have posted solutions to Homework 8.
Friday, October 26: I have posted solutions to Homework 7.
Friday, October 19: I have posted solutions to Homework 6.
Saturday, October 13: Exam grades have been posted to Blackboard. Please let me know if you have any trouble seeing them.
Friday, October 12: Some of you are probably wondering how to interpret your homework grades. So far there have been four homework assignments, each out of 20 points; the maximum possible score on the homeworks so far is thus 80 points. 61 out of 72 students handed in all four homeworks (in the case of those who didn't, there has usually been some sort of extenuating circumstance). Among those 61 students, the mean homework grade is 65.4, the median 67, and the standard deviation 8.3. The distribution of total homework grades so far, among those students who have handed in all four homeworks, is:
Thursday, October 11: The exams have been graded. The mean grade on the exam among those students in my recitations was 38.1 out of a possible 65; the standard deviation was 11.0. Unofficial letter grades are as follows: 45 or above is an A, 35-44 is a B, 25-34 is a C, 15-24 is a D, and below 15 is an F. (Please don't read too much into these; these should be understood as nothing more than vague guidelines.) Due to technical difficulties the grades are currently not posted on Blackboard. I'll be giving back the exams in the next recitations; if you'd like to get them back sooner please stop by my office. My office hours this week are Thursday from 2:30 to 3:30 PM and Friday from 10 AM to 11 AM.
Tuesday, October 9: Here are some logistical announcements due to the exam and the Fall Break:
Saturday, October 6: I have posted solutions to Homework 4.
Friday, September 28: I have posted solutions to Homework 3.
Friday, September 21: I have posted solutions to Homework 2.
Friday, September 21: I have decided that the lowest homework grade for each student will be dropped in the calculation of your final grade.
Thursday, September 13: I have posted a solution to the second problem from assignment 1. This doubles as some notes about mathematical writing, which you should read before submitting the second assignment.
Thursday, September 13: My office hours for the rest of the semester, barring unforeseen circumstances, will be on Mondays from 2 PM to 3 PM and Fridays from 10 AM to 11 AM.
Friday, September 7: I will have office hours next week on Monday, September 10 from 2 PM to 3 PM, and on Friday, September 14 from 10 AM to 11 AM.
Thursday, September 6: I will have an office hour on Friday, September 7 from 10 AM to 11 AM.
Homework: please hand in the problems that Dr. Pemantle has designated to be handed in, in recitation. If you will not be able to attend recitation, please hand homework in to my office (DRL 4N27) in one of the following ways:
If you plan to do one of these, hand in your homework by 10:30 AM on the day your recitation meets (that is, by the end of the recitation). Do not hand homework in to either my department mailbox or the box on my office door.
I will grade the homework based mainly on mathematical correctness, but clarity of expression is also important. I quote Dr. Pemantle's homework page: "All problems handed in are to include a verbal explanation of the answer; computations alone are not sufficient. Once you leave Penn, you will be expected to communicate the outcome of your work--including your methods as well as your actual results--and this is intended to give you some early practice at such communication." In short, don't forget everything you ever learned about writing just because this is a math class.
You may work together to solve the homework problems. However, you should each write up your solutions separately.
Core problems:: the department has designated a list of core problems for this course. These are, essentially, the problems you should be able to do by the end of this semester; a few exceptions are detailed by Dr. Pemantle. These will also make up the core of the material we talk about in recitation. You should do these problems before the recitation in which they will be discussed.
Quizzes: The purpose of quizzes in many math classes at Penn is to make sure that you've done the homework, and/or to encourage attendance at recitations. I have found that giving quizzes takes a large chunk of time out of the recitations and causes unnecessary stress, so I do not plan to give quizzes.
However, if recitations are poorly attended, or if students are in general attending recitation but seem to have not done the homework, I reserve the right to give quizzes. These quizzes can not be made up.
Participation/attendance: You should participate in recitation, by asking questions, by answering the questions of your fellow students, or by participating in discussion. Obviously you cannot participate if you do not attend class. While there will probably be no formal grading of participation, it may be taken into account in cases where students are on the border between different course grades. Furthermore, you will almost certainly learn more -- and thus do better on the graded homework and exams -- by participating in class than you will by not doing so.
Grading: the recitation grade -- homework, quizzes, and perhaps participation -- counts for 20% of your overall course grade.
Solution to the tetrahedron problem and some notes on mathematical writing
Solutions to homework 6. (There was no homework 5.)
Some notes on Euler-Maclaurin summation.
More informtion on this class will be posted here or at Dr. Pemantle's web site as it becomes available.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, December 11, 2007.