M21-111 Calculus for Humanities I

2000 Summer I semester



 
 
 

Instructor: Petronela Radu
Office: WEH 6205, x8-5190
Office hours: Monday to Friday 12:00 to 13:00 or by appointment
E-mail: pradu@andrew.cmu.edu
Schedule: Monday to Friday from 1:30pm -2:50pm, room - Hamburg Hall  1510 COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course is aimed at students in the humanities and social sciences who are required to have a good fundamental knowledge of mathematics, especially calculus, but for whom those calculus courses designed for engineering and science students are inappropriate.  The level of preparedness of students in this course varies significantly, from those who have done little or no mathematics in the past few years to those who have already encountered calculus, either in high school or college.
The material presented is mostly discussing about a class of interesting and beautiful mathematical objects called functions.We will take a close look at their definitions, analytical features and in the end we would see their graphic representations based on the information acquired before.It is at this point in your mathematics education that you begin to study mature mathematics,  and where, you can first glimpse its beauty and power due to a more abstract perspective.

The text is Applied Calculus (third edition) by  Dennis Berkey.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS:About twice a week the students will be required to turn in an assignment which will consist of 4-6 problems given in class; there will also be optional assignments on which the student can work to improve on those subjects that s/he doesn't feel confident about. Also, reading assignments will be assigned, and at the beginning of each class, randomly selected students will be asked to present a problem or some theoretical facts from the assigned material. Late assignments will be accepted only in special situations.

SYLLABUS: The syllabus is somewhat tentative , depending on the student backgrounds.We will have a couple of courses dedicated to  an algebra and geometry refresher after which we will start studying functions, limits, continuity, graphs of functions, the first and second derivative,
curve sketching, techniques of differentiation, logarithms, differentiation of logarithms and exponential functions and as time permitted other results or applications of the material studied.

GRADING AND EXAMS:There will be two tests, a quiz of 15 minutes on every Monday and a final. The average of the tests and final exam will be 50% of the final grade; the homework assignments will represent 30% and the quizzes 20%. Make-up exams will be administered only in extreme cases. Cheating will be penalized by at best giving a lower letter for the course grade. The test dates are:
Thursday  06/01,  Friday 06/16 and the final will be on Friday 06/30.
Hopefully everyone will earn an A!

COURSE POLICY: Class attendance is expected. If you miss a class it is your responsibility to get the material and the homework assignments from your colleagues. You may discuss your homework assignments with each other, but the solutions should be written up individually. The final solutions should not be  shared.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to bring them up!
 



 URL of this page is http://www.math.cmu.edu/~pradu/M21-111.html