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: 18648

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 April 6th and 13th.

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

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

Grading

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

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

March 2nd (on “projects” 1-4)
March 30th (on projects 5-7)
May 18th (on projects 8-10)

Using Julia

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

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.

Local installation

Julia can be downloaded and installed on a local computer. 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.

From a USB stick (Windows only)

You might try downloading http://hogwarts.ucsd.edu/~pkrysl/shared/Portable_Julia.zip and expanding to a USB thumb drive. Run from there. You will need to install the IJulia and MTH229 packages and add the project files. Details are on mth229.github.io.

Binder

You can also run Julia through “binder” https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/mth229/229-projects/HEAD. This is a free service, but has limitations: not as much memory, it times out after 10 minutes of inactivity, it is slower to load.

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. 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.

Quizzes

There will be quizzes at the end of most classes. These are answered and graded through WeBWorK as well.