Grades will be determined by daily attendance and essays, weekly homeworks, and periodic exams.
Attendance and daily essays are mandatory. We will deduct one percentage point from your final grade for each unexcused absence or missing essay.
Typed essays are due at the start of each class. They are on the subject of that day's reading and are meant to help students prepare for class discussion. Students should use grammatically correct and coherent English. Violators of Ron's Rules for Good Writing must rewrite their essay.
Essay topic headings:
Weekly homeworks are due at the beginning of Thursdays' classes and returned in class. In total, they are 25% of your final grade.
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If typing, nicely formatting math takes a bit of work. If you are using Microsoft Word, use the Equation Editor. You may also use Mathematica. You'll get better-looking results with LaTeX or LyX, but their learning curves are much higher.
If you have questions about how your homework was graded, first contact the grader. If that does not resolve the issue, then contact one of the instructors.
Extra Credit: Each homework will have some hard extra credit problems. These can raise your final grade and, potentially, exempt the top students from the final exam.
Honor Code Policy: You must work alone, not in study groups. You can seek help only from instructors. Do not refer to previous years' solutions or solutions found online from any source other than this semester's course web site. If you are turning in a homework after its solution has been posted, do not refer to those solutions.
Late Policy: You have 3 "slip days" that allow you to turn in homeworks late. They may not be used on essays or exams. Any integral number of remaining slip days may be used on any homework. Each calendar day used, including weekends and holidays, counts. To use a slip day, simply note its use on the front of the homework, and turn it in to an instructor. Otherwise, late homeworks are not accepted without exceptional reason, e.g., family emergency, unless you previously arrange an extension with the instruction. Having "too much work" is not sufficient reason. Early requests for extensions are much more likely to be granted than last minute requests.
Extra credit projects (programs or essays) may be arranged by consent of Prof. Goldman.
There will be three closed-book, closed-notes, take-home exams. Each is 25% of your final grade. For each, you may create one page of formulas prior to the exam, and handed in with the exam.
Honor Code Policy: You must work alone, not in study groups. You can seek help only from instructors. Do not refer to any source not provided with the exam.
Note that most of the problems will be taken from the textbook, emphasizing the material most missed on the homeworks.