Calculus I (4 credit hours)
Call number: 47157
Description: Differentiation and integration of algebraic and transcendental functions with applications. Prerequisite: Math 126 AND 127 or math 128 all with a grade of C or better.; or a satisfactory ACT/SAT/Placement Test Score.
Instructor: Gary Cohen
Text: Calculus, 8th edition; Larson, Hostetler, Edwards is the recommended text.
When and where this course meets: (47157) Monday/Wednesday 6-7:40PM meets in room C276 on the Charleston Campus.
Office hours and location: My office is located on the West Charleston Campus in Building H, first floor, room H101. Tel: 651-5812
Office hours this semester will be Announced in class.
Email: gary.cohen@csn.edu
My faculty web-site can be found at http://www.nevada.edu/~coheng
You are required to
go to my website, print out a hard copy of the entire syllabus and bring it to
me, so I can see you have it, and so I can check off in my grade book that you
have received the syllabus. You
will be issued a grade of F for the course, if you have failed to do this
before the first exam is given. You
cannot be in this course if you have not read all the policies, procedures and
expectations.
ATTENDANCE and RELATED ISSUES: Students are expected to attend class regularly and be punctual. Students who find themselves in the position of having to miss numerous classes should withdraw and take the course when regular on-time attendance is possible. This course was not designed with the occasional attendee in mind. Each lecture covers a heavy dose of material – the lectures do not follow the book (some of the lectures may include topics not even covered in the textbook), so attending the lecture is absolutely critical in order to keep up and not find yourself lost in class. It is critical to note that the material tested on exams is based on my lectures and assignments – missing class and just reading the textbook will usually not be sufficient preparation for what will be tested. The textbook is being used largely in this course as a supplement and reference. The focus and stress of any given lecture may or may not be very similar to the textbook presentation.
Anyone arriving late for a test/quiz/exam will automatically lose 10 percentage points on that test/quiz/exam.
GRADING:
There will be 3 exams in the course prior to the cumulative final exam. Your final course grade is determined from the following weighting of grades. All tests are in-class, unless a take-home test is announced in class.
Test #1 20%
Test #2 20%
Test #3 20%
Pop-quiz Average 20%
Final Exam 20%
*Possible extra credit - see comments below
Tests will be announced at least two class periods prior to being given. Please do not ask me to be more specific about dates in advance. If you have signed up for this class, you have already agreed to attend all lectures, including the ones in which tests are given. If you are not able to keep this commitment, because of possible work or other conflicts, then you should not take this class, since no exceptions will be made to accommodate such situations on test days.
If you miss any one exam prior to the final, then the cumulative final exam automatically will be counted for 40% of your course grade (double). Since the final exam will be a harder exam, you are strongly advised not to miss any exams. There are absolutely no make-up tests and there is no make-up exam for the final exam. The final exam is mandatory in order to pass the course - if you do not show up for the final exam and take it, then your course grade will be "F". There is not a pre-decided fixed number of quizzes – so you need to be ready to take a quiz any given class period. Quiz questions tend to be quite straightforward and test to see that you are keeping pace with the course. Exam questions are more varied in terms of both depth, breadth and difficulty levels.
If you miss a class, it is your responsibility to get a copy of any assignments/handouts that were distributed during the missed class. I may or may not have a copy of what you need with me the next class period. Therefore you may need to rely on photocopying the handouts from another student or from the library reserve packet in order to be able to do the work by the required deadline. You will not be given extra time to complete the work, regardless of whether or not I have what you need when you need it. This I view as the student responsibility –not mine. Please do not call or email me asking me to email or fax what you need. Please do not ask me what you missed when you were gone – since the course is lecture driven, you will have to get the notes from another student in the class and see for yourself what you missed. There is usually no quick and easy way to explain it in the necessary amount of detail.
The basic grading scale for all work in the course will be:
90-100% A
80-89% B
70-79% C
60-69 D
Below 60% F
+/- scores (such as B+ or C-) will be determined within the above broader grade categories when I assign final grades. When calculating grades, rounding up is done only for scores at least halfway between two whole numbers (so 84.5 would be rounded up to 85 but 84.4 would be rounded to 84).
Calculators: You may use scientific or graphing calculators on quizzes and tests, including the final exam, except in those cases in which it is specifically announced prior to handing out the test/quiz that you may not. You are responsible for learning how to use your own calculator - I will not answer questions regarding how to use your specific calculator during quizzes/tests/final exam. If you do not have a graphing calculator and choose to purchase one, I recommend the TI-85 or TI-86. I am most familiar with these two models. If you choose to use another type of calculator, I will not be able to help you in learning to use it, as different models often work in very different ways.
I DO NOT LEND OUT MY CALCULATOR TO STUDENTS WHO FORGET TO BRING THEIR OWN FOR TESTS/FINAL EXAM. I do not allow students to share a calculator on tests/final exams, so if you want to use one, then be sure to bring your own. You may also want to bring an extra set of good batteries just in case the ones in your calculator fail during the test.
The overall calculator philosophy that shall be adopted for this course can perhaps be summarized by the following points:
This is a realistic way in which people sometimes use technology in the research world –it can be fun, challenging and rewarding. However, a calculator should never be used as a crutch or a replacement for an actual understanding of basic mathematical principles.
Help with problems in other courses: I am teaching you math 181 and therefore will be as helpful as I can with all your math 181 questions. For help with questions in other math courses that you may be taking elsewhere (such as linear algebra or differential equations for instance), please see your instructor for those courses.
Homework:
You are responsible for doing all the required homework after each lecture, regardless of whether or not I specifically remember to tell you to do it (just assume you should start working on it immediately, unless you are told not to). Do not let yourself get behind in the homework. This is a fast moving course and you will find it hard to catch up if you put off assignments until later. The homework is your opportunity to learn from your mistakes, but your course grade will reflect the end result only - how well you are able to perform on the final exam/quizzes/tests. If you do not come to class having done the homework, you will not be able to derive the full benefit of the homework and may feel lost on material that presumes an understanding of previously covered topics.
Showing your work: Always show all work. Sometimes I may give more partial credit than other times (sometimes I may be generous and other times I may not give much partial credit – depending on the nature of the topic and the kinds of quiz/exam questions), but unless it is explicitly stated to the contrary, you are required to show all work in a well-presented organized manner in order to be eligible to receive credit.
When grading I usually go by the principle: "little work receives little or no credit, regardless of whether the answer is right or not." Being able to clearly show/explain how you arrived at your answer is something I consider to be an essential part of what a college educated person is able to do.
I have had many experiences where students have been shocked and upset by not receiving credit for correct answers, but in which there was a gap in logical justification. Just remember, I am grading you on your logical steps – not on the answer (which for all I know, you might have copied off someone else’s paper). The three kinds of mistakes that most bother me are: (a) gaps in logical steps shown in your work, (b) incorrect usage of mathematical notations, and (c) sloppiness/disorganization.
*Extra Credit:
There may be a few opportunities to do an extra credit assignment every now and then. Most of these kinds of assignments may involve things that are peripheral/tangential to the thrust of the course and will not be useful for making up for a lack of understanding required material. A few of these assignments may involve viewing a math-related video in class and doing a related assignment on it. I will generally not announce the videos in advance nor will you have another opportunity to view them if you are absent the day these are shown in class. There may also be an extra credit problem or two on some of the tests that you can choose to attempt if you have time for it after doing the rest of the test.
The intention of the extra credit assignments is educational enrichment and one of the goals is to bring a higher level of awareness and intellectualism to the course – such assignments are not an excuse to give students easy points – so only bother doing these assignments if you intend to put forth a strong effort in both thought and care. If I judge your work to be sub-standard in any way, I will not mark it down for the extra credit.
Withdraw/Incompletes:
Note: If you quit attending and do not officially withdraw by the deadline, you will receive an F. I will not issue grades of W or I on account of poor course performance, so if you need to withdraw, be sure to do it in the proper way – this is a student responsibility, not a teacher responsibility. Incompletes will only be issued under very unusual circumstances. If it is determined that a student needs to receive an incomplete (incompletes are extremely rare and usually only for verifiable medical emergencies), the student will be required to make up the remaining course work on a schedule agreed upon between student and instructor –I will only give incompletes that can be made up in not more than a couple weeks from the end of the course, despite the fact that the school policy states that instructors may (but are not required to) give more time than this. I will not let a student drag things out for many weeks.
The final exam will be cumulative in nature and will be based primarily on the totality of all work given in the course (so you would be very wise to save all returned quizzes/tests in a notebook and make sure you can do all problems that you missed). THE TESTS/REQUIRED HOMEWORK/QUIZZES ARE YOUR STUDY GUIDE FOR THE FINAL EXAM - nothing will be a decent substitute for studying your past quizzes/tests/homework and class notes!!! Additionally, you may be asked some questions on the final exam that are similar to homework problems that have been assigned but not yet tested.
HONESTY: Cheating, plagiarism and other acts of academic dishonesty are considered to be very serious offenses at CSN. Any student involved in such activity will be reported to the administration for disciplinary action. Penalties may range from receiving zeros on quizzes/tests to failing the course to being expelled from the college.
CLASSROOM CONDUCT: Any behavior deemed disruptive or counter productive to the educational goals of the class will be grounds for removal of a student from the class. Repetition of such an offense may result in expulsion from the course.
Please be aware that talking to your classmates while I am lecturing is disruptive to other students in the class and to me. Often students do not realize that even chatting in the back of the room can be heard in the first row near the chalkboard. Therefore I urge each student to respect others in the class by saving conversations for appropriate times (before class, after class, during breaks and in class group activities). If I get the impression that there is talking over me while I am lecturing, I may take this as a sign that the class is bored and decide that the time for a pop quiz is ripe.
Cell phones, other communication devices and MP3 players and other entertainment devices are banned from usage in the classroom for any purpose. I do not want to see them in the classroom during lecture or tests. If this becomes an issue with any given student, then I will take the appropriate official actions to have a student removed from the classroom for disruptive behavior (see student handbook). Once removed, you will not be allowed back into my class again at any point.
Finding out your final course Grade: I do not post grades for reasons of protecting individual privacy of all students - therefore you will need to wait until your grade is available from the school via the automated system. NO EXCEPTIONS TO THIS POLICY WILL BE MADE FOR ANY REASON. I DO NOT MAIL INDIVIDUAL GRADES ON POSTCARDS and I do not send them in email or in any other way. It is the student’s responsibility to keep track of all quizzes/tests in order to monitor course progress. I do not carry my gradebook with me so I will not be able to tell you your grade off the top of my head.
Requirements for all take-home work:
Unless otherwise explicitly specified, all take-home assignments to be handed in for a grade must be done so as to satisfy the following specifications. Failure to do so will result in grade penalties.
You are expected to attend class regularly and will be held responsible for all topics and sections covered in class. This is NOT a course designed with the "occasional attendee" in mind. Coming to class is the way to find out what the assignments are, what material was covered, what was stressed, what was omitted, what was presented differently than in the textbook and to ensure that you are doing what is expected of you. I will sometimes present material from a different point of view than the book and I do not feel obligated to follow the book's presentation of material if I wish to stress different things. This also means I will not always follow the section numbers in the book in a strict linear order (so for example I may combine several sections into one lecture, skipping some kinds of examples and adding a few of my own that are not in the book at all...or I may take a totally different approach than what is presented in the book...You really do not want to miss lecture!).
I am looking forward to helping you do your best in my course and wish you a great semester!!
"If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood
on the shoulders of giants." -
Cheating Policy
It's simple. If I catch you cheating or have strong evidence of cheating on tests, then I will go out of my way to pursue the most severe action possible with the administration (which can include, but is not limited to, expulsion from the course or expulsion from CSN or assignment of a grade of "F" for the course, notations on transcripts that cheating had been judged to have taken place). Be forewarned that although I can not monitor you when you are doing a take-home assignment, if I detect certain consistent and highly unlikely "coincidences" between certain student’s test papers, you will be called into my office for a required meeting as a first step in getting to the bottom of these " unlikely coincidences". Be advised that after having graded thousands upon thousands of student papers over the years, I am very much in touch with similarities that are the sort that can occur by chance alone as well as other types of similarities that do not occur by chance, but that are a direct result of student mutual cooperation in doing a test. Unless otherwise specified, you are always expected to do all your own work on your graded assignments and are not allowed to work together with other students or discuss any aspect of the test before handing it to me. Asking other people (tutors, teachers, Internet help chat rooms, bulletin boards, etc.) is also cheating when it comes to tests. Plagiarism (either directly copying or nearly directly copying – i.e., making trivial changes and calling the work your own) is also cheating in my class.
Homework Philosophy for Math 181
I believe in honesty and directness when it comes to communication with students. Therefore, I will tell you outright that there is far more homework in this class than we could ever hope to have the time to cover in class. Not only that, but it gets worse: Since many calculus problems are rather time consuming, there will really only be time to do a small fraction of all homework problems in class. This is perhaps a different situation than you have experienced in previous lower level math courses, where there may have been fewer or simpler, less time consuming problems. Since this course is a prerequisite for serious minded students who will mostly be going into math-related majors (engineering, physics, etc), we simply can not afford to fail to get through the vast amount of material that will be presumed of you in such majors. Therefore, although the homework is very important for you to do outside of class, the homework will very often not form a central part of many lectures – at this point in your studies, a certain amount of independence and ability to function without being hand-held through each homework problem you get stuck on is presumed, indeed. A wonderful aid to you will be the student solution manual sold in the book store. Buy it and use it as much as needed when doing your homework (although its also important to give each problem a serious attempt before just looking up the solution).
On a positive note, you are more than welcome to come to office hours and discuss problems on which you get stuck. Sometimes in class although we might not have the time to slog through the tedious details of a given problem, if at all possible, I will try to give useful advice on how to start and in which direction you should try to head. This often will be enough for you to go home and carefully work out the details.
For those of you who have had me as your teacher in previous calculus courses, you probably have a good idea of how much time you will need doing homework. For those of you who have not had me before, all I can tell you is that you should expect to spend a lot of time doing calculus homework. This means being realistic about not overloading yourself with an unreasonable load of classes. Roughly I would estimate that the average student would spend around 3 hours per lecture doing homework – that’s a minimal estimate (an hour spent on studying lecture notes and 2 hours spent doing the problems...even though a few problems from each section might be challenging and take a long time if you get stuck on those). I would also caution you about trying to do all your calculus homework and studying for the week in just one or two sittings. That’s not a reasonable plan for the average human to absorb this material at the expected level. You should be doing calculus at least 4 days out of the week, if not more.
The world of calculus is a jungle. Nobody can do all the problems in each section in reasonable time – and few people would have that much time. Additionally, there is a vast range of difficulty levels represented in the problem sections in the text. Some of the more difficult problems are put there to challenge the very best students. You should not feel bad about not being able to do such problems – some of these even are challenging problems for math teachers!
The point here is that this makes calculus a living breathing subject that is not just dead after you have gone through material initially – there is always more to come back to and try again if you couldn’t do some of these problems the first time you studied this material.
However, by doing the carefully selected problems in your homework assignments, you should leave this class with a solid background for further study of this very deep subject and its applications. So sit back and enjoy the ride!
Wishing you a great semester,
Gary Cohen
If you arrive late to a test (defined by my announcement at the start of the test that the test has officially begun), You will lose 10 percentage points on that test. There are no exceptions to this policy. You are expected to be in your seats at least 5 minutes before the official test time. I will not repeat any verbally given instructions for students who arrive late – so if additional point losses result as a consequence of not knowing any such verbal instruction, then I do not assume any responsibility and will make no special consideration for this scenario...you simply lose those points, too.
If the test is scheduled to begin, say at 6:00 and you arrive at 6:00, then you are already a disturbance to the students who have begun taking the test, since you will probably be unpacking and shuffling about. If you arrive late, then come in as quietly as you can and do not argue with me about whether or not you are late or about how unfair you think the policy is. By being a student in my class, you are agreeing to abide by this policy, whether you agree or disagree with it. If you can not accept this policy, then do not take the class.
Re-grading Policy
If you feel a grading error has been made on one or more of your test questions, I will be happy to re-grade the entire test for you, but I will not consider individual problems for re-grading. The philosophy is simple: My goal is to ensure you end up receiving the score you earned. If an error in grading has deprived you of a few points, but an error in grading another problem has given you too many points, then both errors ought to be corrected – not only the ones that give you more points. When I hand back tests, I will allow you a short time to look over your test carefully in class and decide whether or not you would like the entire test re-graded and hand it back to me for re-grading immediately at that time before it leaves the room. Once I have given the class this chance to make a decision about re-grading and announce the last chance to hand the test back in for re-grading, I will not consider any further requests for re-grading that test at any time. If you decide you would like your test re-graded, then please follow proper procedure and hand back the test with a note to me on it, which details exactly where you think an error has been made. Each test is graded individually and not by comparison with other students. You may feel that you had more points taken off for making the same mistake as another student, but in reality, your paper may have suffered higher point loss for other reasons (such as degree of incorrectness in use of mathematical notations, clarity of explanation of what exactly your reasoning was, intelligibility, etc.).
Please be aware that often before I hand tests back, I make photocopies of each students’ test or of all tests with scores in a certain pre-decided range. If when re-grading and comparing the test you handed back to me with the photocopy of the original version you handed in, I detect any changes (erasures, crossings-out, re-writing things that were not originally there, etc.), I will promptly assign you an F course grade for cheating. I may also decide to pursue more severe action with the college administration, as I take cheating to be a very serious offense and will not deal with it lightly.
Office Hour Policy
Office hours serve several purposes. Primarily, office hours are a time when a student having difficulty with the course can establish and maintain occasional contact with the professor of the course. While I am happy to talk to my students during office hours, I would like to stress that it is not the purpose of office hours to use that time for private tutoring. If you need that much help in the course, you will need to find a private tutor. To help you understand what I consider appropriate and inappropriate use of office hours, consider the examples below:
Appropriate and inappropriate uses for office hours:
Outcomes:
a. Analyze the concept of function limits and continuity
b. Differentiate functions using fundamental rules.
c. Perform differentiation techniques such as the general power rule, chain rule, product rule and quotient rule.
d. Evaluate definite and indefinite integrals.
e. Differentiate and integrate transcendental function.
Sec 1.2: 1-25, 31-43, 63, 65, 67
Sec 1.3: 1-61, 67-77, 78, 83, 85, 103, 113, 117, 123
Sec 1.4: 7-53, 57-63, 95, 96, 100, 107
Sec 1.5: 1-51, 58, 59, 61-71
Sec 2.1: 1-37, 57, 71-79
Sec 2.2: 1-29, 39-51, 57, 59, 75. 93, 95, 109, 113
Sec 2.3: 1-53, 59-61, 69-75, 83, 89, 93-97, 125, 127, 135