Up: Math 260: Problem Solving

Syllabus for Math 260 II

Instructor. Jon McCammond
Office hours. TW 1:30-3:00 and by appointment in South Hall 6711
Phone number. 893-2060 (no answering machine)
E-mail. jon.mccammond@math.ucsb.edu
My Home Page. http://www.math.ucsb.edu/~jon.mccammond/
Course Home Page . http://www.math.ucsb.edu/~jon.mccammond/courses/fall03/260/

Syllabus. A pdf version will be available soon

Textbooks.
CRC Standard mathematical tables and formulae, 31st ed., by Daniel Zwillinger (ed.) (CRC Press)

Berkeley problems in mathematics, by Paulo Ney de Souza (Springer)

Proofs from the book, 2nd ed., by Martin Aigner and Guenter Ziegler (Springer)

Description. (6 units) Problem solving. The class is designed for first and second year graduate students and one of the main goals is to prepare them for the qualifying exams. It is intended as a replacement for students who might otherwise take undergraduate classes to review or improve their understanding of some material. It will be a more efficient way for graduate students to achieve this goal. It is also intended to accelerate the change of perspective from undergraduate to graduate level mathematical thinking. This will be a problem oriented class. It will be a mixture of review together with covering some areas which are missing from individual students backgrounds. It will be very demanding in terms of students time, as the homework load will perhaps be double that of other classes. Ideally it will be the major mathematical activity for students attending. It will be a 6-unit class during which students will spend part of the time working on problems alone and together and part of the time discussing issues. Some of the time will be used for lecture type presentation.

Grading. Your grade will primarily determined by effort (which includes attendance and participation). I will be giving and collecting various assignments, which I will comment on, but the only aspect which effects your grade is whether you did the assignment and how much effort you put into it. The purpose here is to have the grading recede into the background so that you can concentrate on improving your ability to solve non-routine problems and to express your solutions is a clear and accessible manner.

ADA. Students with disabilities can get assistance from the Disabled Students Program Office (893-2668). I'm happy to work with them and you.

Copyright Information. Please note that all written and web materials for this course have an implied copyright. In particular, you can xerox (or download) for your own use, but you may not reproduce them for others.


Last Modified on 20/Jan/04 by jon.mccammond(at)math.ucsb.edu.