The Final Post

  • The pages for Lectures and Quizzes & Exam have been updated to reflect the end of the course. In particular, the former contains course notes from the last day, and the latter contains suggested exercises to prepare for the final.
  • Your last homework will be returned on the exam day (or by stopping by my office once I have them). I don’t have it back from the grader yet.
  • If you would like to meet between now and the exam, please email or come to Thursday’s 2 pm office hour. I will try to make myself very available for help on your written assignments and exam preparation.
  • I want to say that I have particularly enjoyed this class. I felt that you were a particularly good group of students, I enjoyed being in the classroom and office hour with you, and I was impressed with your hard work and dedication. Thank you all.
  • Good luck on the final exam!

To Do for Wed May 1

  • Please read your textbook, pages 204 through 209 (this covers permutations, transpositions, signs, inversions).
  • Do Exercise 3, but compute the sign 3 different ways (we will start with this example in class Wed):
    • First, by drawing the cycle diagram and using cycle lengths
    • Second, by decomposing it into transpositions and counting those
    • Third, by counting the total number of inversions

To Do for Mon Apr 29

  • Reading: Chapter 8, 202-207; onward to 215 if you wish to read ahead for next week’s material.
  • Online FCQs are open. Please do complete them now. I appreciate it.
  • Task F (your final project) will be due Friday, May 3rd at 11:59 pm. This is a hard deadline!)
  • I am giving written revisions on Task E, on a printout copy of your paper. If you picked up homework in class Friday, it may have been paper-clipped to that. If not, it will be given back on Monday. Please take these revisions and suggestions to heart; your Task E shows a putative final grade (which will correspond to a grade for Task E in canvas), but by devoting appropriate attention to revisions you can improve this grade for Task F (which is the major component of your grade).
  • I will make myself very available to talk over revisions all next week during the week. Please come to office hours or schedule to meet, so I can help you improve your assignment.
  • There is no more homework.
  • I will put up topics for the Final Exam on the Quizzes page, on the menu above. The final exam is cumulative. It will cover all the material we cover up from day one up to and including the last day of class.
  • If you didn’t read the last daily post, click back to check out the grading update.

To Do for Fri Apr 26

  • Read Chapter 8, pages 193-199. Note: there’s an annoying error on page 199, where he refers to “(-1)-partnerships” — this is wrong, they are just partnered x with -x. That’s not a “(-1)-partnership” as he defines it earlier.
  • Take the brief reading quiz on canvas.
  • Please complete your online FCQs if you have not already. I really appreciate the feedback to improve my teaching, and these are also looked at closely as part of various decision-making processes.
  • Note about Writing Assignment grading: I’m working hard to grade the Task E’s, with preference to those that came in earlier before those that came later. I’ll get them to you as soon as I can, but I’ll extend the deadline for Task F revisions if/as needed.

To Do for Wed Apr 24

  • We have been doing very computational types of things in class lately. Please invent some problems for yourself and do them, to practice. Inventing your own problems is good practice and with this style, you can’t go too wrong. There are also problems in the book. (These things will be on the exam, but we don’t have another homework due.)
  • Online FCQs are open. Please take some time now to fill them out.
  • I have made a grading adjustment (strictly beneficial to you). I have been overall very pleased with the energy you have been putting into your written assignments, so I’ve decided to let you count that for a bit more, if it helps your final grade. Specifically, right now the scheme is ( 15% written project / 55% quizzes&exams / 30% other stuff ). There will now be an alternative ( 25% written project / 45% quizzes&exams / 30% other stuff ). You will receive whichever grade is HIGHER from these two computations, so it will only help your grade. I will not penalize the class for this in any way by curving down because of it. It just gives you two different paths to demonstrating your excellence. (Keep in mind, regardless, that the final written assignment is not an easy A; I have high standards for this. You can see the grading rubric on the Writing Assignment page. Please revisit that now as you are finishing up your draft.)

To do for Mon Apr 22

  • Homework is posted for next week. This turns out to be the final homework assignment, since there’s no Friday the following week.
  • Keep up to date with weekly tasks for writing assignment.
  • Finish reading Chapter 7, at least until it begins to talk about relating mod p to mod p^2; we’ll cover this on Monday.

To Do for Wed Apr 17

  • Read your text, p. 173-175, concerning Chinese Remainder Theorem.
  • Explain the Chinese Remainder Theorem (just the statement is fine) to someone who doesn’t know it (your roommate, sibling, etc.). Make sure they understand the meaning of it.
  • Complete the short quiz on canvas (after doing both tasks above).
  • You can view my computer visualizations here. I’ve been adding new ones regularly lately, so check back now and again.
  • Ever thought of doing even more math? There’s a Math Club event coming up: a panel on Graduate School in Mathematics. Math 350, Wed, Apr 17, 5-6 pm. (http://math.colorado.edu/mathclub/)
  • LATE ADDITION: OFFICE HOURS CANCELLED TOMORROW (Tues Apr 16); my apologies.

To Do for Wed Apr 10

  • You have a quiz on Friday. You’ll want to be reviewing your notes and learning the material we are doing Mon/Wed this week (finishing up Chapter 6 and possibly just starting Chapter 7 barely). I’ll keep updating the quiz topics on the Quizzes page as we get closer.
  • Don’t forget to keep chugging on the writing assignment tasks and the homework.
  • But enjoy the spring weather too.