Math 1-3

This is a copy of the original website for this course, which I taught at UCLA in 2014. All of the contact information below is out of date.

Math 1: Precalculus, Lecture 3

Fall 2014

Instructor:	Kristen Hendricks
Office:	6617D Math Sciences Building
Office Hours:	M 11-12, W 2-3, F 10- 10:30
E-Mail:	hendricks at math .ucla .edu

This class has three TAs, H. Edward Chou, Robert Hannah, and Yunfeng Zhang. You can find your TA's e-mail address and office hours on ccle.

A printable copy of the syllabus is here.

Location and Time

MWF 1-1:50, Humanities A51. There are six sections, meeting Tuesdays and Thursdays, see times and places online.

Content

This course is intended to give you a solid footing in precalculus so that you can continue to take Math 3A or Math 31A. We will cover the idea of a function, linear and polynomial functions with applications to optimization, and inverse, exponential, logarithmic, and trigonometric functions.

Textbook

D. Lippman & M. Rasmussen. Precalculus: An investigation of functions. Available online here

Prerequisites

A score between 16 and 34 inclusive on the Mathematics Diagnostic Test.

Homework and Quizzes

Homework will be assigned weekly and not collected. Instead, there will be a quiz in section every week (excluding the first) consisting of two problems from the previous week’s homework. The first quiz will be on 10/14 for the Tuesday sections and 10/16 for the Thursday sections. You must take the quizzes with your assigned section. Note that the Tuesday sections will not meet on 11/11, because of Veterans’ Day, and the Thursday sections will not meet on 11/27, because of Thanksgiving. Therefore everyone will take eight quizzes. Your lowest quiz score will be dropped in computing your grade.

Exams

There will be two in-class midterms on Monday, October 27 and Friday, November 21. There will also be a final exam Monday, December 15, 8:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. Make-up exams will only be given in cases of documented illness or family emergency, or religious holidays. Please note that the university requires that a student who misses the final exam without a documented explanation for the absence be given a failing grade in the course.

This course is 28 lectures long, excluding exams. The first midterm will cover the material of approximately Lectures 1-9, the second midterm will cover the material of approximately Lectures 10-19. The final exam will be roughly sixty percent from the material of Lectures 20-28 and forty percent from the preceding lectures. More specific guidance will be given as we approach the exams.

Exams will take place in multiple rooms. The class will be divided up alphabetically by surname according to the registrar listing and told (either in lecture or by e-mail) in which room to take the test. Please pay close attention to these announcements; exams taken in the wrong room will not be graded.

Regrades

Requests for regrades of quizzes and midterms will be considered up to fourteen days after the graded work is returned, and should be turned in to me in writing (preferably typed) and signed. Please make sure to look over your graded work carefully before the time limit passes.

Grading

Grades will be recorded throughout the quarter using the myUCLA gradebook facility. Your grade will be computed as follows:

(10% Quiz grades) + (25% Midterm 1) + (25% Midterm 2) + (40% Final Exam)

Letter grades will not be assigned until the end of the quarter, at which point your composite numerical score will be converted into a letter grade based on class ranking, using the department guidelines for a class of this size. Here is an idea of what that means:

If you have a composite 90% in the class, you are guaranteed an A-, although in actuality the cutoff for an A- will be lowered until about a quarter of the class is getting a grade of A- or above.
If you have a composite 70% in the class, you are guaranteed a C+, although in actuality the cutoff for a C+ will be lowered until only about a third of the class is getting a grade of C or below.

Enrollment

Enrollment questions should be addressed to the Mathematics Department Undergraduate Advising Office. You can find them in MS 6356, or contact them at ugrad@math.ucla.edu . They will try to help if you are having scheduling trouble.

Questions and Getting Help

For mathematical questions, you are encouraged to come to office hours with me or your TA. You may also find the Student Math Center in MS 3974 helpful. Their hours are here.

Because this is a very large course, if you have a logistical question, the best thing to do is to check the syllabus/website, then e-mail or talk to your TA, and then get in contact with me if you still have questions. This helps ensure that at such time as you have an issue that really needs to be dealt with by me, I will have the attention and time to handle it for you.

Schedule

We will follow the sequence of topics in the official course description here.

In the printable copy of the syllabus you can find the tentative week-by-week schedule, complete with actual dates.

Homeworks