MAT267F Ordinary Differential Equations (Winter 2018)

Lectures:

Teaching assistants:

Textbook:

Morris Tenenbaum, Harry Pollard: Ordinary Differential Equations, Dover.

We won't be following the textbook very closely, but I may assign some readings and/or problems. An electronic version of the textbook is available through the UofT library.

Preliminary Course Outline:

Click here.

Course Syllabus:

Click here.

Course Marking Scheme:

Homework 20%, Midterm 30%, Final 50%. More details TBA



The midterm exam is scheduled for March 8, during class time, in EX300/310.

Policy for the term tests, quizzes and final exam: No tools or unauthorized aids are allowed. (This includes cell phones, calculators, and other electronic gadgets.) There will be no makeup quizzes or tests. For excused absences (e.g. doctor's note), the missed work is prorated based on the remaining term work.

Please familiarize yourself with the University policy regarding academic integrity.

Important dates:

January 4: start of classes
Feb 20-23: Reading Week (no classes)
March 8: Midterm Exam (during class time, but different location: EX 300/310) March 14: Last day to drop course from academic record and GPA
April 4: end of classes

Request for Volunteer Note Taker:

Accessibility Services is asking for a volunteer note taker for this course. All you have to do is attend classes regularly & submit them consistently.
Step 1: Register Online as a Volunteer Note-Taker at this site .
Step 2: Select your course and click Register
Step 3: Upload your notes after every class
Email as.notetaking@utoronto.ca or call 416-978-6186 if you have questions. Volunteers may receive co-curricular credit or a certificate of appreciation.

Homework:

We will use crowdmark for this course, hence you'll receive your assignments electronically via crowdmark email, and then upload your solutions to their site. If you don't receive your homework, or have trouble with uploading, please send me an email.

As you will see from the instructions given by crowdmark, you can hand-write the solutions (use a different page for each problem), and then scan them or take a picture to create a pdf or jpg file for uploading. (A separate set of pages for each problem.) Scanning is available for free at many UofT libraries. Also, I have learned that there are now apps for smartphones to scan documents, generating a pdf that's much better quality than a jpg picture. Make sure that whatever you upload is readable -- you can use the preview option on crowdmark for that. According to the crowdmark instructions, you can double-check and resubmit anytime before the due date.

Alternatively, you are very much encouraged to type the solutions using LaTeX . In case you're unfamiliar with LaTeX, here is a pdf document with some instructions, produced using LaTeX, and here is its source file . You can rightclick to downlad the source file, rename it (just make sure it ends on .tex), and modify it.

The homework as well as the midterm, will also be returned electronically. If you have questions or concerns regarding the markings, you should first contact the TA who marked the problem (which may not be the TA from your tutorial), by sending him an email. (Be sure to include your crodmark link.) If the mark gets changed you should let me know (email) so that I can enter the information.

Handouts and additional materials:

MAT267 website by Dmitry Panchenko (includes lecture notes)
Online notes from Paul Dawkins
Direction field plotter from Geogebra
Another direction field plotter, by Darryl Nester. (When using his plotter, it's best to switch from `Euler' to `Runge-Kutta' -- it gives much better results!
Plotting vector fields in general is not so easy, since the lengths of arrows tend to interfere with each other. The following vector field plotter gets around this by using colors and speeds. Here are some examples produced with this software.
A physics demonstration of forced vibrations
An example of resonance
Another example of resonance