Teaching

<<Differential Equations with Linear Algebra>>

Course Information

Text:  <<Differential Equations and Linear Algebra>>, by Farlow, Hall, McDill, and West. Pearson, 2nd ed. 2007. ISBN: 0131860615.

Course Objective: To learn the concepts and techniques of ordinary differential equations and linear algebra. Topics include qualitative methods, linear and nonlinear ODEs, and first and second order systems.

Here is the syllabussyllabus.pdf

Lecture Times and Location

• Recitation section hours can be found on the applied math department course schedule.

• The Help Room Coordinator 

• The Projects are coordinated by the TAs:

Office Hours

TA office hours are all in the help room, ECES 109. You may attend the office hours of any TA, not just your recitation TA.

ECES 109 is in the far south of the Engineering Center, toward the Leeds School of Business building. Follow signs for Environmental Sustainability and Student Success Initiative; you may have to open a door to go down the hallway, which is partly under renovation.

These are the hours which the help room is staffed:

Homeworks

Homework solutions are to uploaded to D2L.

Exams

There are three midterm exams and a comprehensive final.

There will be no make-up exams or early exams. In the event that you were ill and missed an exam, or if you are currently so ill that you expect that you might miss an upcoming exam, you need to provide documentation from a physician stating that there was, or currently is, a medical reason for missing the exam. Unfortunately, it is not sufficient to produce documentation that you simply visited a physician. Your course grade will then be determined by the rest of your course work.

Please bring your CU ID to each exam. Electronic devices are not allowed during the exams.

If you think there was an error in the grading of an exam problem, within one week of when the exam was returned, submit to your instructor a detailed written explanation addressing the specifc grading error. At the discretion of the instructor, a penalty may be assessed for frivolous or nebulous re-grade requests.

Exam Reviews

Exam archive from previous years.Final exam_sol.pdfFinal exam.pdfMidterm exam 3_sol.pdfMidterm exam 3.pdfMidterm exam 2_sol.pdfMidterm exam 2.pdfMidterm exam 1_sol.pdfMidterm exam 1.pdf

Taking previous year's tests is the recommend method of studying.

Projects

To give you experience solving larger, more difficult problems involving multiple concepts, there will be three computer-based projects assigned during the semester. Suggested software is Matlab, although Mathematica and Maple may be used. These projects are required of all students registered in APPM 2360.

PDF copies of each lab, and any additional materials related to the projects can be found in the table below or on D2L.

Project	Files	Due Date	Notes
Project 1	PDFproject_1_0.pdf	Thurs, Feb. 23 before 11:59 PM
Project 2	PDFproject_2.pdf	Thurs, Mar. 23 before 11:59 PM
Project 3	PDFproject3_0.pdf	Thurs, Apr. 27 before 11:59 PM

General Information about projects

There will be three projects assigned during the semester. The goal of the projects is to combine multiple concepts and solve difficult problems. The projects will give you some experience in the practice of modeling and solving problems using computer software. The projects also give you several chances to show off your verbal prowess. The overall quality of the lab reports will be taken seriously. They will be graded for presentation, spelling, grammar, clarity, and insight, as well as mathematical correctness.

For each project, students must work in groups of three. Only one report per group is necessary and all members of the group will receive an identical grade. The names, ID numbers and correct recitation section numbers for each group member must be included in the report. If any of this information is missing, your grade may not be recorded! The regrade policy is the same as for exams, except that lab questions should be directed to the APPM 2460 lab course coordinator(s).

The projects will be submitted electronically via D2L by midnight on the due date. Late labs will not be accepted or graded and a score of zero will be given to any late lab. Further details will be given later in the semester.

Several OIT labs are also available for your use - ECCR 244 in particular. You are free to use whatever computer system you feel most comfortable with, although it may be beneficial to use Matlab since the TAs will be expecting Matlab code during their office hours.

Students can download a copy of Matlab for their use by going to link given below under the Resources section.

Writing Guidelines

Your report needs to accurately and consistently describe the steps you took in answering the questions asked. This report should have the look and feel of a technical paper. Presentation and clarity are very important. 

Here is an example lab with illustrations of a good lab report which would receive high marks and a bad lab report that would receive low marks.  Note that in the bad lab report, all questions are technically answered, but not in the form of a lab report.

• Absolutely make sure your recitation number is on your submitted report.

• Start with an introduction that describes what you will discuss in the body of your document. A brief summary of important concepts that you will be using in your discussion could be useful here as well.

• Summarize what you have accomplished in a conclusion. No new information nor new results should appear in your conclusion. You should only review the highlights of what you wrote about in body.

• Always include units in your answers.

• Always label plots and refer to them in the text.

• The main body of your paper should NOT include lengthy calculations. These should be included in an appendix, and referred to in the main body.

• Labs must be typed. Including the equations in the main body (part of your learning experience is to learn how to use an equation editor). An exception can be made for lengthy calculations in the appendix, which can be hand written (as long as they are neat and clean), and minor labels on plots, arrows in the text and a few subscripts.

• Your report doesn't have to be long. You need quality, not quantity of work. Of course you cannot omit any important piece of information, but you need not add any extras.

• DO NOT include print outs of computer software screens. This will be considered as garbage. You simply need to state which software you used in each step, and what it did for you.

• You must include any plot that supports your conclusions or gives you insight in your investigations.

• Write your report in an organized and logical fashion. Section headers such as Introduction, Background, Problem Statement, Calculations, Results, Conclusion, Appendix, etc... are not mandatory, but are highly recommended. They not only help you write your report, but help the reader navigate through your paper, besides giving it a cleaner look.

Project Submission Guidlines

You and your group will submit your project on D2L, in the appropriate dropbox (you can find these under the assessments tab in D2L) Your group must:

• Submit your project in pdf format. When word documents are uploaded to D2L, the equations in them are commonly jumbled around.

• Submit the code used for your project (a .nb file for Mathematica, .m file for MatLab, etc).

• Have only ONE group member submit the project. Having multiple people in your group submit the project to D2L will result in multiple grades, and we will take the LOWEST one.

• Include the names of all group members working on the project.

Project regrade requests

If you think that your project was graded incorrectly, you may request a regrade. To request a regrade, please fill out this regrade request form , and submit it to either of the people running the APPM 2460 course. Any regrade requests that are unjustified or simply a complaint may lead to a lower project score.

Resources

• Review material on complex numbers.

• Review material on differentiation, integration, and first-order differential equations

• APPM 2360 Exam Archive

• MVT Software

• Mathematical Visualization Toolkit (MVT), created by the applied math department in 2008. You need Java installed, then once your web-browser is on the MVT website, respond to any prompts and tell your browser to run the program, and then in the Java control panel (for Mac, in system settings; this is actually an operating system setting, not a browser setting), add the site address under the security setting that allow for site exceptions. Restart your browser and the webpage should work.

• D2L (Desire2Learn) has grades and homework solutions

• MATLAB Licenses & Tutorial

• MATLAB is used in this class, mainly for the labs, and is a standard technical computing language for applied math and engineering

• Wolfram Alpha is similar to Mathematica (same company) and does many useful things, such as checking your work on partial fractions.

• Use this tool to check your understanding, not replace it, otherwise you will find the exams to be quite unpleasant!

• Dfield and Pplane are Matlab and/or stand-alone java tools for plotting direction fields and phase-planes.

• Our textbook has a few online DiffEq demos (you may have to adjust Java settings, as discussed for MVT)

• Geogebra is a nice, modern equation plotter with many features, and you can run it on your computer or use a web-based version

• This geogebra slope-field module shows basic slope field (aka direction field) calculations and is entirely web-based so you do not need to install any software

• Tutoring

• Applied math tutor list (these tutors are applied math graduate students and usually very familiar with the 2360 curriculum). Most of these tutors charge

• for a list of similar resources across the entire college of engineering, try the engineering Academic Support Page

• Student Success Center (SSC) offers free tutoring; check their website for the current schedule. Most daytime hours are at the BOLD center, and evening hours are held in Williams Village North and Aden Hall.