MTH 229

MTH229: computer projects to reinforce calculus concepts from numerical and graphical points of view will be presented. Suitable mathematical software will be utilized. Problem solving techniques using the computer will be discussed. The students will be assigned a number of projects to be completed individually or in small groups.

Details

Instructor: Professor John Verzani. john.verzani@csi.cuny.edu.

Section: 17398

Website: www.math.csi.cuny.edu/verzani/Classes/MTH229. Also Blackboard will be used to message the class, as necessary.

Class time: Th: 12:20-2:15, 1S-108

Special days: No class on 2/22 (Monday schedule)

Office hours: Th: 10:45-12:00, 1S-220

Policies

  • Disability policy: Qualified students with disabilities will be provided reasonable academic accommodations if determined eligible by the Office for Disability Services. Prior to granting disability accommodations in this course, the instructor must receive verification of the student’s eligibility from the Office of Disability Services. It is the student’s responsibility to initiate contact with the Office for Disability Services staff and to follow the established procedures for having the accommodation notice sent to the instructor.

  • Integrity policy: CUNY’s Academic Integrity Policy is available online at https://www.csi.cuny.edu/catalog/undergraduate/academic-policies.htm#o3518

  • AI Policy: using AI for answers, while enticing, is not allowed. Not only is it unfair to those who are working on the answers, it is almost always wrong – Julia is not part of the training sets for most AI engines.

Grading

Your grade will be based on your project average (40%) and your average on 3 exams and (45%) and your average on in-class quizzes (15%)

The three exams, each of equal weight, will be on

  • March 7th (on projects 1-4)
  • April 4th (on projects 5-7)
  • May 16th (on projects 8-10)

Quizzes

There will be quizzes at the end of most classes. These are answered and graded through WeBWorK (below).

Using Julia

The mathematical software used in this section will be Julia. Julia is an open-source software language well designed for numerical computations.

Learning resources

For most students, the online, in-class projects will provide the necessary background for completing the work. For more background, the website mth229.github.io provides longer-length learning materials.

Julia is open source. We have several different ways to use Julia in this class.

Through the department’s Juliabox setup

Once set up, you will be able to log on to a website hosting Julia and the course projects at https://www.math.csi.cuny.edu/juliabox. Your username will be the same as your WeBWorK logon. Your password will be independent and set by you when you first log on.

Lab image

There is a lab image in 1S-108 which is useful. However, it is running a quite old version of things now.

Binder

Click the badge to open a notbook on Binder

Binder is a free web service for Jupyter notebooks. It is resource limited, but useful in a pinch. This image runs a lighter-weight version of the MTH229 package and doesn’t have the symbolic math part.

Local installation

Julia can be downloaded and installed on a local computer. See https://github.com/JuliaLang/juliaup for one way to do this. In addition to Julia, there are a handful of necessary steps to download and install the projects and some accompanying libraries. Details are to be found at mth229.github.io, but basically you need to install IJulia and the MTH229 and Plots packages.

Using WeBWorK

The class is structured around 10 topics or “projects”. For each topic, there are a series of WeBWorK questions to complete. These will be worth 40% of your grade.

Logging on

The url https://www.math.csi.cuny.edu/WeBWorK/courses.html lists the courses. Find MTH229 - Verzani and select that. Login details are on the side panel.

Answering questions

The WeBWorK questions for this class have some differences than the ones for MTH 231 and MTH 230. In particular, they require you to do the computations in Julia, as WeBWorK is instructed not to help out with certain simplifications it is otherwise capable of doing.

In addition, WeBWorK has a different indicator for scientific notation. Julia uses and e, as in 1.23e45, whereas WeBWorK would use an E, as in 1.23E45.

Most questions have a tolerance of 4 digits after the decimal point. Some questions where the answer comes from reading a graph will relax this tolerance.

The expected workflow is that the question is read in WeBWorK, the question is answered in a Julia notebook cells, the appropriate results are then copy and pasted for the WeBWorK answer. Unfortunately, the fonts used to display the WeBWorK questions do not lend themselves to copy and paste into a Julia notebook.