MATH 232: Integral and Vector Calculus
Spring 2015
Instructor: Thomas Barthelmé
Office: 235 McAllister building
Mailbox: 109 McAllister building
Phone: 814-865-1123
Office Hours: T 9-10am, R 9-10am, or by appointment.
Course Syllabus: click here
Course Websites: https://sites.google.com/site/thomasbarthelme/teaching/math-232-spring-2015
Angel (will be used to post your grades as well as make announcements)
Emails
I reply to emails during business hours Mon-Fri 9am-5pm.
I will usually reply to emails received during this time frame the same day. I will not see/read any emails received outside of this hours before the following business day. So if you have something important to ask me, plan ahead!
If you're writing about an emergency where every seconds count, I would suggest that you stop writing an email and call 911.
Attendance
Attendance is strongly encouraged but not required. If you miss a class you are still responsible for all material due, for learning all concepts covered, and turning in assignments given. Class participation is also encouraged. Students are encouraged to let me know when I make a mistake and give suggestions on how to make the class better.
Tutors at the Penn State Learning
Free mathematics tutoring is available at The Penn State Learning. It is a student service providing free "drop-in" peer
tutoring, as well as peer-lead exam review sessions.
The drop-in sessions will be held in 7 Sparks building, Sunday though Thursday from 6pm to 10pm. For more information you may visit the web https://pennstatelearning.psu.edu/tutoring/mathematics.
If you need extra help, a (paid) tutors list maintained by the Mathematics Department Undergraduate Office is available. You may contact the Undergraduate Office in Room 104 McAllister building.
Exams
The conflict exam will take place on the same day as the regular exam but from 5:05-6:20pm.
Here's last semester midterm exam: midterm_Fall2014.
Here's last semester final exam: Final_Fall2014.
Here is a link to previous Math 230 exams for more practice: http://www.personal.psu.edu/tam44/Fall2013-Math230/Exam-page-Math230.html
The second midterm and the final on that page are the exams that will be most relevant to you for practice.
Homework Rules
- Every week, there will be a list of suggested homework and a list of mandatory homework that will be collected and graded. The mandatory homework are listed with an asterisk.
- The purpose of the homework is for you to better understand the concepts and methods that were discussed in lecture and in the text
- You should discuss homework problems with your classmates, however, you will have to write your own solutions to submit. Also, if you did the homework with a friend, I would suggest to make sure that you are able to redo it on your own. A good way of doing that is to go over the method to solve the homework in group, but then write the actual solution on your own.
- Out of the mandatory homework, a randomly selected few will be actually graded. However, points will be taken off if you do not attempt all of the mandatory homework, regardless of whether a particular question is graded or not.
- An attempt at a question means that you have to show that you tried answering the question, just copying the statement is not enough!
- You need to show work for all the mandatory homework, so that we can see that you understand: just writing the answer is not enough, you need to show how you got to that answer.
- The homework will be collected on Thursdays.
- Please staple your homework if you have multiple sheets, in order to prevent part of your work from being lost.
- When handing the homework to me, fold the sheet(s) of paper in half and write your name on the back, your grade will be written inside to preserve confidentiality.
- Your lowest 2 homework grades will be dropped. Due to this reason, no late homework will be accepted. If you know that you won't be able to make it to class on a Thursday, arrange for someone else to hand it in. I will only accept homework given during class, no exceptions of any form for any reason.
Homework Schedule
Mandatory homework are the numbers followed by *
Quizzes
There will be quizzes almost every Thursdays. They will cover material seen on the previous week.
There are no possibilities of taking any make-up quizzes, whatever the reasons for missing the quiz. However, I will drop the worst 2 quizzes grades.
Advice
1. Understand the underlying concepts, not just the procedure for getting the answer. Learn to learn!
2. Ask questions if you don't understand. It's possible I'm not explaining it correctly, or there is another way to understand the concept. Don't be afraid to visit me in office hours. I am here to help.
3. Use the textbook. It contains a lot of information.
4. Sleep! It's the number one way to improve your mathematics ability. Just not during class...