Instructor: Gregor Kovacic
Office: 419 Amos Eaton
Phone: 276-6908
E-mail:
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. The problems will not be hard, but you may 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.
There will be three tests; the last 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 about 40% of the final grade. The three tests will each constitute 15%, 15%, and 30% 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.