Day 1 in Mat229

• Welcome! I have prepared a video designed to walk you through our agenda today. Please watch it while checking out the links, syllabus, etc. for our course.

• FACE: there are certain goals that we must strive to achieve everyday:
  • Focus
  • Attitude
  • Creativity
  • Effort
  All of these work together: when you improve one, the others will improve as well.

• Some course details:
  • Two websites:

    1. First of all, Prof. Wilkinson and I are running two sections of MAT229, basically in lock-step. We'll both be attending the first few lab sessions, to make sure that things run smoothly.

       Many of the materials we are using were originally created by Prof. Wilkinson, then battle tested by me a couple of years ago. Now we're teaming up to improve everything!:)

    2. The course website may be useful! Make a note of (bookmark) this URL:

       http://www.nku.edu/~longa/classes/mat229

    3. We'll be doing some things on the Canvas website, such as turning in work or taking exams.

    But these daily agendas will be found on this website, and all links will be radiating out from here.

  • Syllabus: logistics, etc.

    The Departmental Syllabus for all Mathematics courses is a part of the syllabus for this course.

  • Mathematica: We'll be using Mathematica in "class" (for lectures), and you should use it on your homework and exams, whenever possible and convenient and allowed. You can get a personal student copy as an NKU student by following the directions for "Student Download".

  • "Class Discussions": Although this course is asynchronous and on-line (mostly), I'm hoping that you'll work together on the Canvas forums. I encourage that. Maybe you'll have a problem that someone else can solve; maybe you'll be able to solve someone else's problem.

  • Agendas: For each day, MTWF, there will be one of these "daily agendas". It will have announcements, perhaps some calculus ($\frac{df}{dx}$ -- here's a gratuitous derivative for you), and links to materials you'll need for that day.

  • Calculus Materials: For each topic, or section, there is a
    1. reading: (a pdf of a Mathematica notebook, as well as the notebook itself, sometimes with video help links). This "talks you through" the topic, with questions along the way which we hope you will attempt.
    2. lecture: After you have attempted the questions, a video "lecture", based on going over the "reading".
    3. summary: a section summary, based on the text Calculus 8 by Stewart. Some of you may have used Active Calculus: I'll try to bring that into the conversation as an additional resource (although I've not used it myself, I'll be checking it out as we go along).

       Directed reading/summaries (e.g. Section 6.1 summary)

    4. section homework: Associated with each section is an IMath homework assignment. IMath is an automated homework system, which Prof. Wilkinson and I like very much. Our problems have been (for the most part) battle tested, so hopefully those will go smoothly.

       We will no doubt be adding some problems along the way, however, and so we will appreciate you pointing out any issues or problems.

    These materials will be uploaded to this website "just in time", three times per week, MWF, at 8:00am. You may go over these materials whenever you want, of course, but please keep up!

    I tend to tinker with these right up to the last moment, which is one of the reasons that I don't upload them all now.

  • Sign up on IMath: You'll want to create an account on IMath:
    1. Click on "Register as a new student"
    2. Course ID: 443
    3. enrollment key: 2.7182

    I'll probably keep all your grades on IMath, too.

  • Other Activities and Assignments: In addition to the materials above, each week there are
    1. Labs: a lab (in person), which will cover material covered in prior days using Mathematica (a very powerful piece of mathematics software). You'll have some tasks to do, and these notebooks will be turned in to Canvas by Saturday.

       Some of you will be coming in on Tuesday; some on Thursday. These will be Zoomed so that you may even do them twice -- once in person, and once virtually (or perhaps even twice virtually, for those who are in quarantine, or who can't come in for other reasons)! But hopefully once will be enough....

    2. HW Sets: a weekly homework assignment, which will be turned in for grading on Canvas by Saturday night. This allows us to ask story problems, etc.

  • Schedule and Assignments: this will be continuously updated with assignments. You can also see our plan right now for exams.

  • Free tutoring and help: Free calculus help is available!

    "The Math and Statistics Lab will run over Zoom this semester. We will open at 2 pm on Monday, January 11 and close on Wednesday, May 5 at 8 pm. We are happy to have Bijay Rimal, Blake Weimer, Rachael Lerch, Abigail Leonhard, Jacob Adkins, Jared Slavey, Hanna Schmitt, and MK Kasturiratna working in the Lab this semester. Please encourage your students to stop in for help."

• Let's go!

  1. Here's your first set of materials for Inverse Functions:
     1. as a pdf
     2. (once you're comfortable with Mathematica): here's the Mathematica notebook
     3. "lectures" over this material: note that I was using a slightly different version of the materials -- Prof. Wilkinson and I continue to attempt to improve things, so he added several "in-line" videos to help with the questions. Other than that, modifications were minor.

Next time: Lab 1! Then Section 6.2 on Wednesday.

• Tomorrow (1/12) those designated "Tuesday Lab Folks" should come to MP 306, for a lab from 1:40-2:55; those who want to zoom along, may! It will be exciting, and full of lots of zany antics (mostly related to operator error of the Zoom guys).
• The sooner you load Mathematica on your personal computer, the better!