Instructor: Gregor Kovacic
Office: 419 Amos Eaton
Phone: 276-6908
E-mail: kovacg at rpi dot edu
Weekly homework will be assigned, collected, and graded. I strongly encourage collaboration on the homework. You are encouraged to work in groups in which you discuss the problems and help each other out if you are stuck. However, copying is forbidden, as is partitioning the homework among several students without everybody's participation on every problem. More precisely, you may collaborate as much as you want, as long as in the end you write your homework down without looking at someone else's paper.
I strongly suggest that you at least look at the problems and start thinking about them on the day they are assigned. Mathematical analysis is a very hard subject, so many problems will be hard and you will need some time to think about how to solve them, so do not delay the homework until the night before it is due. No late homework will be accepted.
It is strictly forbidden to fish for solutions of recycled problems and copy them into yours, or to copy other students' solutions. Such behavior will be considered the highest breach of academic integrity and will land you in the office of the Dean of Students with the recommendation that you be expelled from the class with a failing grade. It will also earn you zero points for the entire assignment on which the copying occurs.
Depending on the student feedback and performance on the homework, there may be two tests; the second test will be comprehensive, that is, it will test all the knowledge from the beginning of the course on. There will also be an optional final exam during the finals week for those students who will not be happy with their previous grades. The rules for this final exam are explained below.
I am expecting to use the following grading rules: The total homework grade will constitute at least 50% of the final grade. The two tests, if given, will each constitute about 25% of your final grade, respectively.
The grade cutoffs will be no stricter than
A: 90 - 100
B: 80 - 89
C: 70 - 79
D: 60 - 69
F: 0 - 59
and may end up being quite a bit looser, but I won't know where exactly they will be until the very end.
If you are unhappy with the grade that you got from the homework and the tests, you can give it up, and instead take the optional final exam during the finals week. That grade will supersede all the previous grades, so do not take the final exam unless you are sure that you will do better than during the semester.