MA110 INTRODUCTION TO LINEAR ALGEBRA SYLLABUS SUMMER 2007 Instructor Patrick Barrow Website http math berkeley edu borisp email patrick barrow gmail com office 937 Evans hours M 10 00 class W 2 00 4 00 and by appointment Lectures are MTWTh from 12 10 2 00 in 433 Latimer Textbook is Linear Algebra Done Right by Sheldon Axler and there also will be handouts Homework will generally be due at the start of class on Tuesdays and Thursdays and it will be posted on the website You also have the daily informal assignments of checking the website and reading the relevant sections in the book Homework will account for 25 of your final raw score Your lowest two homework scores will be dropped and no late homework is accepted under any circumstances Towards the end of the summer I may offer optional problems that may replace earlier scores Exams are each for the full 110 minutes on July 12 July 31 and August 16 Respectively they are worth 15 25 and 35 of your final raw score If you have conflicts with any of these dates then you need to see me immediately to make arrangements Grading I minimally guarantee a 15 point curve which means I will compute your final raw score and then assign letter grades according to the 85 70 55 40 cutoff scheme I will only possibly revise this downward so that any revision can only help you I am also generally willing to let students switch to a full final grading option and I arrange these on a case by case basis If at any point in the semester you feel you have fallen significantly behind then please do not be embarrassed to approach me for help Comments The above cutoffs may seem low This is because we plan to adopt the grading philosophy of heavily penalizing incorrect reasoning Arguments with logical gaps or false claims get no credit This is a proof course That means answers are to be composed as if you are communicating a fully justified solution to a mathematical colleague Undoubtedly this description is vague at the moment but a general theme of this course will be learning exactly what it means to communicate rigorous mathematics The hardest part of this endeavor is understanding definitions properly which is the topic of the first handout 1 2 That being said generous partial credit will be awarded for progress towards a full solution If you have figured some things out but are stuck at a specific point then say so in your answer Think of your writeup of the problem as a response to a query If you cannot fully respond then you are also expected to acknowledge that Try to prove a specific case work out an example or conjecture that a particular theorem may be relevant Whatever you do DO NOT write something that is downright false Or if you do do it with a disclaimer of the form this is what I have and here is why it is wrong To know when you have a partial solution and to identify precisely the parts you are missing are invaluable mathematical skills No one will solve every part of every problem You are encouraged to work together to solve homework problems Of course the actual written solution must be your own composition The problems will mostly come directly from the textbook In fact you may consider the table of contents a conceptual syllabus for the class with one section roughly corresponding to one lecture This makes it easier for you minimizes my errors and gives us both a common reference For each exam I will give specific sections for which you will be responsible I also plan to keep a quasi daily record of what we have covered on the website While I intend to mirror the book conceptually I do not plan on lecturing straight from the book My lectures will aim to serve as a companion to the text For example we will certainly prove the same theorems but I may offer proofs that are aesthetically different simply because I have the advantages of a blackboard and narration I will also provide examples that go beyond those in the text Finally every time I make a mistake assume it is on purpose because I am testing you