Academic Conduct: Your conduct in this course, as with all BU courses, is governed by the BU Academic Conduct Code. Copies of the code are available from the CAS Dean's office (CAS 105) or here.. Specifics rules for specific assignments will be discussed in lecture.
The "Golden Rule" of academic conduct is to "Give Credit Where Credit is Due". That is, if you use or consult a source, including a book, journal, web page or person, then cite that source (i.e., give sufficient information so that someone reading your work could determined what information you used and be able to find the source). The details of the form necessary in citation vary greatly from subject to subject, but the basic rule is universal.
If you have any doubt about any aspect of proper citation or academic conduct in general, ask!.
Who should take this class? (Prerequisites): I will assume that you have had, and remember, a full year of Calculus (i.e., Calculus 1 and 2). You will be expected to remember how to do derivatives and integrals and remember the basic ideas behind these operations. (While all other topics will be introduced "from scratch" those who have had Multivariable Calculus will have a definite advantage from chapter 2 on since you have had more practice with Calculus and you have seen vector fields.)
Text: Differential Equations by Blanchard, et.al.--Fourth Edition
We will cover almost all of the first 4 chapters, some of chapter 6 and chapter 5 as time permits. You will need software to solve differential equations numerically. There are many places this is available for free--or you can write your own (which is an excellent exercise--even using Excel).
Technology: I will send any course announcement via the registrar's course list (so your BU email account). Make sure you check this account regularly (once a day is sufficient) so that you are up to date with any course announcements.
There will NOT be a Blackboard page for this class.
Grades: During the semester you will accumulate points by doing homework (and, possibly, occasional quizzes), in class exams and the final. At the end of the semester the points will be added with the weighting given below and your grade will be determined based on the total points accumulated. Correspondence between letter grades and point values will be announced for the inclass exams.
Weights for components of the course work are as follows:
Notes:
Miscellaneous:
Study groups: I encourage you to form study groups and to spend some (not all) of your study time with your group. Make absolutely sure that you abide by the requirements of the Academic Conduct Code and the rules for each assignment. In particular, you should write up your assignment on your own. Papers which are too similar will be subject to action under the Academic Conduct Code porcedures. Also, if you get a significant idea or assistance from a tutor or a classmate, BE SURE to reference them ("Thank you to So A. So for suggesting I integrate by parts on problem 3.").
Pedagogy: I have heard it said that students learn approximately 5 percent of the material for a class in lecture. This is usually quoted to justify doing away with lectures. However, about 5 percent of my body is my head and I would not want to do without that.
In fact, I think that the 5 percent figure is about right. You learn mathematics by doing mathematics, doing exercises and writing up solutions carefully so that your answers can be easily understood. On the exams, you will be asked to do problems, and your ability to do so will be what determines your grade.
Seeing examples and hearing the important points discussed before trying to do the problems yourself is much more efficient than reconstructing all the mathematics for yourself (the mathematics we will cover took hundreds of years to develope). So think of the lectures as how you prepare to do the real work of learning the material which is doing the exercises yourself.
Final comment: Too many students consider their courses hoops that they must jump through in order to reach a degree. This philosophy implies that you only need to keep the material in your head until the final. This is just wrong.
Each class should change how you look at and understand the world around you. That means that each class should also change how you act. In this class we will build models of how small pieces of the world work--and these models make predictions on consequences of our actions. Failure to change your actions based on the implications of these models means that you have wasted your work in this class...which is much worse than not taking the class at all. So think about what you learn and act accordingly.