MAT237

MAT237 - Multivariable Calculus

University of Toronto, St George Campus, 2018-9

  1. Important links
  2. General information
  3. Textbook and other resoures
  4. Prerequisitess
  5. Tests, homework, quizzes, marking, extra marks
  6. Whom should you contact?

Important links

General information.

  1. Basic scheduling information (for example, time and locations of lectures) is available from the Arts and Science Timetable. The course instructors are

  2. All email about administrative questions should be sent to

    admin237@math.toronto.edu.
    If you email your instructor about administrative matters, he will forward your message to this account.

  3. Help Hours. TAs will be available every week

We also plan to schedule extra TA hours before Term Tests.

Textbook and other resources

We will more or less follow the textbook Advanced Calculus, by Gerald Folland, first edition (2001), published by Pearson.

Course notes will be posted online. These will include detailed discussions of all topics where our treatment deviates substantially from what is found in Folland's book. They will also include a large number of recommended exercises. The online notes will not be completely comprehensive, and in places they may just refer you to relevant sections of Folland's book.

The course schedule will detail which topics in Folland's book and the online lecture notes are covered at which time, and will also have information about quizzes and tests.

Prerequisites

The prerequisites for this course are:

More about prerequisites can be found in the online notes

Tests, homework, quizzes, marking, extra marks

  1. Final Exam
  2. Term Tests
  3. Quizzes and Tutorials
  4. Homework
  5. Extra Marks
  6. Requesting that we remark something
  7. Last word on marking

Your course mark will be based on homework assignments (turned in online), quizzes (administered during tutorials), four term tests, and a final exam. It will be computed according to the formula

$$ CM = 40\% *F + 8\%*H + 10\%*Q + 42\%*T + E. $$

In the above formula, $CM$ is your Course Mark, and

For people who transfer in at a late date, missed tests or assignme nts will be treated as if they were missed due to legitimate illness.

Basic skills and advanced concepts

The online course notes will explicitly identify certain Basic Skills. These will include for example

They will not include more theoretical aspects of the class, such as the ability to carry out proofs related to course material, or other skills requiring deeper conceptual understanding.

Half of the marks on the Term Tests and the Final Exam, and all of the quizzes, will focus on these Basic Skills.

By contrast, the homework assignments will all focus on more theoretical aspects of the class and will ask you to develop and write proofs.

Free marks for self-knowledge

On tests and homework assignments, for many of the more conceptual problems (not Basic Skills), if you leave the answer blank, you will receive 20% of the available marks. If you write an answer that is worse than no answer at all, you can receive fewer marks. Whenever this rule applies, we will state this explicitly; if we do not say anything, then no free marks will be awarded.

Final Exam

The final exam will be a 3-hour exam that will take place during the April 2019 exam period. It will cover the entire course.

Term Tests

The term tests will take place on the following dates. All these dates have been confirmed and will not change.

Students with disabilities should register with Accessibility Services.

If you have an academic conflict for one of the tests (for example, a tutorial or a lab for a different course), then we will offer you an alternative time. For this, you will need to let us know at least one week before the date of the test.

If you are unable to write any of the term tests for a legitimate reason (e.g. severe illness), we will accommodate you, but you must notify us as soon as possible --- ideally with 24 hours after the test, and certainly no more than a week after the test. You will also have to provide us with a hard copy of appropriate documentation when you are able to return to campus. The accommodation may consist of a make-up test, or the weight of the test may be distributed among the other three term tests or to the final exam. We will inform you of the details once you are approved.

Quizzes and tutorials

In addition to lectures, you will have one hour of tutorial per week, starting in about the third week of the Fall Term.

Quizzes will take place in the tutorials, so you must enrol in a tutorial, and you must go to the tutorial in which you are enrolled. The deadline for enroling in tutorials via ACORN is September 19.

As mentioned above, quizzes will focus on Basic Skills identified in the online course notes.

Quizzes will begin in about the third week of the Fall Term, and from then on, there will be a quiz (almost) every week. Different tutorials will have different quizzes. Quizzes will not focus on the most recent material; instead, any given quiz may ask about any Basic Skills covered from the start of the year to the week before the quiz.

Tutorials will also give you a chance to practice problem-solving skills, and they will introduce new homework assignments, to make sure that the questions are clear.

If you would like to change the tutorial in which you are registered, please

  1. first check the Arts and Science calendar to make sure that the tutorial you want to move to has space available.

  2. if it does, please send email to marija@math.utoronto.ca with the subject Change MAT237 tutorial. The email should include

We cannot guarantee that the request will be granted (this is done centrally) but normally it is. You should hear back rather soon from marija@math....

Homework

There will probably be 4 homework assignments per term. They will be turned in online, probably via Crowdmark.

As mentioned above, your two weakest homewost scores will be dropped. If you need to miss one homework assignment for any reason, even if competely justifiable, this will be counted as one of the two homework marks that will be dropped.

On collaboration: Discussing exercises (including graded homework problems) with your classmates is useful and a good way to learn. However, when writing up your solutions for submission, you must work independently and present solutions in your own words. If two students hand in identical homework assignments, then both students are considered to have commited academic misconduct, regardless of who copied whom. The penalties can be severe. For more information, please read the University policy on academic misconduct.

Extra marks

You can earn extra marks by pointing out mistakes in the online notes or other course material. (Such mistakes are always present in material typed by humans, although we will do our best to keep the numbers down). Mistakes should be pointed out by posting on piazza. Please put the word typo in the subject line for the post, and please check to see that the typo has not already been pointed out by another student.

You can earn up to 1/2 mark per mistake you find, up to a maximum of 3 marks over the whole year. (Less than 1/2 mark will be given for some errors, such as typing $0$ instead of $\bf 0$.) For any given mistake, the bonus will only given to the first student to point it out. Typos (such as misspelled English woords) do not count as mistakes, but mathematical typos (such as writing $\times$ instead of $+$ in a formula, or getting a sign wrong) do.

Other opportunities for extra marks may be announced during the year.

Requesting that we remark something

If you think that we have made an error in marking a test or homework problem, please send email to admin237@math.toronto.edu explaining what you think we have done wrong. Do this within one week of the date that the evaluation is returned to you, or we might refuse to look at it.

Here are a few points to keep in mind.

  1. We rarely reply positively to requests that say something like okay maybe I made a mistake, but taking off $x$ points is way too harsh in my opinion. The important thing is that the marking is consistently harsh (or lenient).
  2. Related: we rarely reply positively to requests that say something like okay, maybe I made a mistake but it seems like a very umimportant mistake to me. In cases like this, we often find that the student has failed to appreciate the underlying mathematical issue.
  3. Remember that markers have the right to deduct points for unclear presentation of a proof. In writing mathematics, the goal is to communicate a mathematical argument clearly to your reader. In a difference of opinion between a reader and an author as to how to judge clarity of writing, the reader is more or less always right.
  4. In particular we will almost never reply positively to remark requests dealing with points deducted for clarity of exposition, if (as with homework questions) the number of points involved is worth something like .05% or .1% of your course mark.
  5. On the other hand, we sometimes see clear errors in marking, such as when a TA fails to notice see page ..., or else when a TA types the wrong number into crowdmark by mistake. We encourage you to bring any such errors to our attention.

Last word on marking

It should go without saying that all grades in MAT237 are computed solely on the basis of student performance.

Whom should you contact?

Technical mathematical questions can only be answered by email if they are written very clearly, and have a very simple answer. Any complicated questions should be asked in person.

Please keep in mind that we receive a high volume of email, and it may take some time before you hear back from us. Instructors may also decline to reply to messages in which they are addressed in a highly informal way, such as Hey! or Yo!