Math 263 Sect 101 (Fall, 2004): News

The class average on the final was 47% with a median mark of 48%. That is, the marks were slightly higher than on the first and third midterms but lower than on the second midterm. All midterm and final exam marks were curved (upward) before calculating the final submitted grades, and the average and median final submitted grades were 60% and 64% respectively.

December 3, 2004: Well, that's it. Thank you for your attention this term. Good luck with your studying and on all your exams!

If you missed today's class, here's the sample exam I handed out and went over (as a PDF file) plus the one-line answers. I don't have complete solutions to questions 1-7 written up, so you'll need to borrow notes from someone who was there; for question 8, since I didn't have time to get to it, here's a complete solution. I also handed out the final exam formula sheet which be used for the actual exam. (Don't bring your own copy to the exam. We'll supply fresh copies.)

See the "Important Final Exam Information" and the "Final Exam Resources" below.

December 2, 2004: Tomorrow is the very last class.

No, don't be sad! We'll see each other again next week and in calculus-themed nightmares for many years to come.

My plan for tomorrow is to simply work through a complete, 2.5 hour sample final exam made up of questions from actual previous finals (for other calculus courses but covering the same material).

November 29, 2004: Well, this is the beginning of the end! On Wednesday, we'll finish up Section 16.4 on the Divergence Theorem and, time permitting, do several more examples on the material in Chapters 15 and 16. On Friday, I'll spend the class going through a complete sample exam (made up of questions from one or more actual past calculus exams).

Speaking of old exams, on Dr. Feldman's section webpage under the "Old Exams" heading, there's a collection of TEN previous final exams (five from Math 200 and five from Math 317). That's 25 solid hours of super calculus funtime for you to enjoy next week.

November 26, 2004: I apologize for the gruesome lecture today. I don't know where my head was. Hopefully, I'll get back on track on Monday. If you didn't attend (and perhaps you should consider yourself lucky), I handed the midterms back. The section average was 40.8, and the median grade was 40. This is very similar to how the other three sections did.

November 24, 2004: I'll hand the midterms back on Friday. In the other sections, the average was very close to the first-midterm average, and I expect similar results for our section.

I'll also be handing out teacher evaluation forms at the end of class, so prepare your many grievances for airing.

November 19, 2004: Well, that's the end of the midterms. Nothing left but the final exam! Anyway, have a good weekend.

November 15, 2004: The formula sheet for Midterm #3 is now available on the homework page. This sheet contains a lot more information (including many trigonometric identities and more integral formulas) than previous sheets, so you might want to take a close look at it before Friday, just to get a sense of what's on it.

Good luck with your studying! Remember that I have extended office hours for the remainder of this week.

November 12, 2004: The midterm date has been changed! The third and final midterm will be held Friday, November 19 in class (LASR 104) from 11:00-11:50 rather than on Wednesday as originally scheduled. The first half of class that Friday will be a normal lecture. Please let me know as soon as possible if you are unable to write the midterm on the new date.

November 8, 2004: Midterm MT02 was handed back on Friday. The grades were much better than last time: the mean was 63.6 and the median was 63. If you didn't pick up your test on Friday, I have them in my office. You can pick them up during my office hours (2-3pm today and 12-2pm next Friday).

Next class, we'll finish up 15.2 Conservative Fields (which I keep writing on the board as section 15.4 for some reason), and we'll start on 15.5 which will take us 2.5-3 hours of class time to complete.

November 4, 2004: Correction: We'll be covering 15.3 and 15.4 on Friday and 15.2 on Monday.

November 3, 2004: The midterm MT02 questions and solutions (for both versions of the test) are available on the homework page. I haven't quite finished marking them, but they should be done in time for me to hand them back on Friday. Solutions for HW06 should go up sometime this afternoon.

Also, note that our schedule for the next couple classes is to cover 15.2 and 15.4 on Friday and 15.3 on Monday.

October 29, 2004: Another midterm down, and only one more to go. My office hours are cancelled today (Friday), and I will resume my normal office hours starting Monday.

Have a good weekend, remember to set your clocks back, and see you on Monday! Also, note that homework assignment HW06 is due on Wednesday.

October 26, 2004: The midterm #2 formula sheet is now available for viewing. Don't bring your own copy to the midterm. We will supply copies with the test.

October 22, 2004: The midterm date has been changed! It should come as good news to many of you that the midterm will be held Friday, October 29 in class (LASR 104) from 11:00-11:50 rather than on Wednesday as originally planned. Note that the first half of class on that Friday will be a normal, 50 minute lecture. Also, let me know as soon as possible if you are unable to write the midterm on the new date.

October 18, 2004: The due date for homework assignment HW05 has been extended to Friday, October 22. Also, I'll have extra office hours on Wednesday, so my office hours this week will be:

October 15, 2004: Sorry for the short notice, but I'm cancelling my office hours today because of illness. I'll try to schedule some extra office hours next week to compensate.

October 13, 2004: Okay, here's the deal. Anyone who handed in an HW04 assignment today may optionally hand in a MATLAB supplement (limited to HW04 questions 6 and 7) on Friday. I would strongly encourage you to at least take a crack at it.

Also, I have to backpedal on the issue of solutions for HW04. One professor decided to collect the whole homework on Friday instead, so the rest of us can't post even partial solutions until then. Sorry about that.

October 12, 2004: I hope everyone had a good long weekend. I meant to post this reminder earlier today, but I'm planning to have some extra office hours today (Tuesday) from 5:00-6:00pm to help with any homework questions.

October 6, 2004: The midterms were handed back today. The average was around 43%, comparable to the averages of the other three sections. If you didn't get your test back today, you can come pick it up during my office hours on Friday.

Homework assignment HW04 is now up on the homework page and is due next Wednesday. Questions 6 and 7 are intended to be done using MATLAB, and question 7 in particular requires you to write a little program to implement an algorithm we'll be talking about on Friday.

October 4, 2004: The midterms will be handed back on Wednesday. Sorry for the delay, but look on the bright side: this increases the chance they'll all be lost in a freak Pacific hurricane before we've had a chance to record the marks. Also, there's a correction to HW03 question 8(a). The quadratic approximation should be calculated at the point (-1,0) rather than (0,-1). The HW03 questions on the homework page have been updated to include this correction.

October 1, 2004: Because I zipped through it very fast today and probably erased a few boards too quickly, here is the complete derivation of the quadratic approximation formula for f(x,y). (Also, since seeing a slightly different approach to a problem or concept often helps make it clearer, you should note that Dr. Feldman's section webpage has several PDF files in the "Notes" section on the equality of mixed partial derivatives, the chain rule, and Taylor polynomials for one- and two-variable functions, all the topics that we covered today.)

Have a good weekend, don't forget that HW03 is due next Wednesday, and I'll see you Monday when we'll start on Section 12.8 with 13.1 and 13.2 to follow later in the week.

September 30, 2004: HW03 and the midterm questions and answers are now available on the original homework page. Sorry for the delay.

September 29, 2004: Well, one midterm down and two to go. It looks like this one might have been a little hard. Also, some of you may have noticed that I get a little bit freaked out when I'm collecting the test papers at the end. I'll let you decide which of those is the bigger understatement.

We should have the test papers marked by the end of this week, so I'll return them in class probably on Monday but definitely by Wednesday.

For Friday's class, we'll be covering 12.4, 12.9, and 12.5. Also, the homework assignment HW03 should be posted sometime today, and it will be due next week, Wednesday, October 6.

September 24, 2004: Midterm #1 is next Wednesday, and the formula sheet is now available for viewing. Do not bring your own copy to the midterm. We will supply copies with the test.

Because of Dr. Loewen's absense, we've had a little trouble getting the homework page properly synchronized. If you've previously bookmarked it, you may find that the old bookmark leads you to an outdated version. The copy here [outdated link omitted] should have up-to-date practice problem sets, links to HW01 and HW02 questions and answers, and the midterm formula sheet.

The marker will be returning the marked HW02 to me sometime on Monday. I'll hand it out at the end of class if I have it by then; otherwise, it'll be available for pick-up during my office hours.

I'll hold extended office hours next week (in my office Math Annex 1215) to answer last-minute midterm questions:

Also, I'll be checking my email regularly this weekend if you have questions that can be asked and answered by email.

September 22, 2004: There are several bits of news today. Sorry to post them so late.

The solution set for HW02 is now available on the homework page. As I mentioned in class today, I'll have the HW01 ready to hand back (for both my section and the students visiting us from section 103) on Friday.

September 17, 2004: I forgot to calculate that integral at the end of class, so here's that example plus another one illustrating integration using variable substitution (also know as change of variables). Have a good weekend, and I'll see you in our beautiful new room on Monday!

September 15, 2004: Update: Solutions to HW01 are now available on the homework page.

Here's a complete writeup of the intersection example I overenthusiastically erased off the board today. Also, we have a new Monday/Wednesday classroom, slightly modified lecture times, and new office hours:

Effective Monday, September 20: Lectures will be:

Monday, Wednesday in Forestry Science Centre (2424 Main Mall) room 1221 at 11:05-11:55
Friday in Lasserre room 104 at 10:05-11:50

and Office Hours will be 2:00-3:00 Monday, 12:00-2:00 Friday in Math Annex 1215

September 14, 2004: Hooray! We've been assigned a new, much better room for Mondays and Wednesdays, so tomorrow's class will be the last one in Social Work 124. Starting Monday, Sept 20, we will be in the Forest Sciences Centre (2424 Main Mall) room 1221. Of course, I'll make in-class announcements about this tomorrow and on Friday.

Also, just a reminder that we'll be starting Section 11.3 tomorrow, and we'll cover the rest of 11.3, 10.5, and 12.1 (!) on Friday.

September 10, 2004: Thanks for your patience today. I realize the pace was very fast, but we covered a lot of material (4 sections) in two days. Now, we can turn to the calculus part of vector calculus on Monday starting with Section 11.1. (We'll come back to Section 10.5 later.) In general, we'll be following the same topic outline as the other sections of this course.

Don't forget the homework assignment HW01 due Wed, Sept 15 in class! (But try to have a good weekend anyway.)

September 8, 2004: Welcome back! I hope you had a great summer. The bad news is that, even though it's only the first day, you already have a homework assignment due in one week. Note that, on the homework page, the homework assignment is coded HW01. The practice problems, coded PP01, are just for practice, so they don't need to be handed in.

Also, we'll be covering sections 10.1-10.4 by the end of Friday's class, so please take some time to read through this material, especially the many fine examples that we won't have time to cover in class.

Math 263 News