Syllabus

Class Resources

Section meetings

Each section meets for four hours a week. Sections will be interactive and should provide useful perspectives, context and reformulations of the course material; we strongly encourage you to attend.

Office hours

Each instructor will hold three hours of office hours each week. The schedule of office hours can be found on the private Canvas page. Any enrolled student is welcome to attend office hours with any instructor.

Course Text

Linear algebra with applications by Otto Bretscher, 5^th Edition. There are several different ISBNs which all correspond to the same text book: We know of 978-0-321-79694-2, 978-0-321-79697-7 and 978-0-321-91691-4, and there may be others as well. Any book labeled as 5^th edition is fine.

We intend to cover 1.1–3.4, 5.1–5.4 and 6.1–6.3, 7.1–7.5, 8.1 and 8.3. We will use the textbook to assign readings, as a source of problems to discuss in class, and as a source of homework problems.

Videos

Professor David Speyer (one of our faculty members who often coordinates this class) has recorded lecture videos for the entire course in Fall 2020, when the course was entirely online. These videos are available online Links to an external site. and are an optional but recommended resource.

Work Expected

Students enrolled in Math 214 are expected to read the appropriate portions of the textbook. They are expected to turn in the weekly written homework and WebWork and to work on three projects in all. Students are also expected to pass the Gateway exam and to take the two midterm exams and the final exam.

Exams

This course has two evening midterm exams and a final exam. See the exams page for more on exam policies and dates. Students should make sure that they will be available, in Ann Arbor, to take the exams at the scheduled dates and times.

This course also has a "Gateway exam", a computer administered exam on basic computational material from the first Chapter of the book/first week of class. Students have many opportunities to pass this exam but must do so by a date in the third week of classes. The Gateway accounts for a significant portion of the grade, and the contribution from the Gateway is all or nothing. See this link for more information on the Gateway.

Students in need of accommodations for a disability must provide documentation from the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) office Links to an external site.. Students should provide that documentation as soon as possible; students providing documentation less than one week before an exam may be refused.

Projects

A significant portion of your grade will be derived from three projects. Each of these projects will guide you through an applications of linear algebra.

The first project is individual, the second will be done in groups and the third and final project will also be done in groups and involve an in-class group presentation.

Written homework

Most weeks, there will be a homework assignment consisting of problems from the textbook. It will be due on Friday night at 11:59 PM.

The assignment will be turned in and returned through Gradescope.

Webwork

On most weeks, there will be a WeBWorK assignment, administered online. The assignment will contain routine computations on the material studied that week. It will be due on Friday night at 11:59 PM.

The assignment will be administered automatically through the WeBWork system.

Section attendance

Students are expected to attend sections in person and, when there, to interact with the course material and their fellow students. Missing section occasionally for medical reasons or for sporadic commitments is fine, but the course is taught on the assumption that you will usually be present and learning in your classroom. Of course, if you are ill, please stay home and please contact your instructor or fellow students for notes.

To encourage coming to class, 5 points of the grade will be reserved for attendance and class participation. Attendance will not be counted during the first two weeks of class, so as not to penalize students who add the course late, and also not during the final week of project presentations. (In other words, in Winter 2025, attendance points will be counted starting on Jan 20 and ending on Apr 11.) For the rest of the term, students will get 1/6 of a point for every hour of class attended. Thus students attending at least 30 hours of lecture during this period will earn the maximum possible attendance points. Note that some of our sections run for one hour four times a week, while other sections run for two hours twice a week. Attending a one hour class earns 1/6 points while attending a two hour class earns 1/3 points. The maximum possible points is 5, so 30 hours of class.

We are not going to implement a system of excused absences. There are approximately 44 class hours in the term not counting the first two weeks and the last (half) week, so this should give enough room for occasional absences.

Students may occasionally attend sections other than their own; we will merge all sections before computing attendance points so this is not something you need to explicitly tell us about. Students planning to regularly attend a section other than their own should inform the course coordinator; this will probably be fine but we may need to limit it if too many people move

Academic Integrity

As the LSA Community Standards of Academic Integrity Links to an external site. says, "The LSA undergraduate academic community, like all communities, functions best when its members treat one another with honesty, fairness, respect, and trust... the College promotes the assumption of personal responsibility and integrity and prohibits all forms of academic dishonesty and misconduct. Academic dishonesty may be understood as any action or attempted action that may result in creating an unfair academic advantage for oneself or an unfair academic advantage or disadvantage for any other member or members of the academic community." By enrolling in this course, students commit to not use inappropriate resources which would provide them with unfair advantages.

On homework assignments, you may collaborate with other students in Math 214, but you must understand the work you turn in and write it in your own words. You may similarly collaborate on WeBWork, but must be involved in all the computations you submit. On group projects, you are of course expected to collaborate with your group, and may ask members of other groups for ideas. Your instructors are also glad to provide help; see here for a list of office hours. If you seek help from mathematicians or students outside the course, you should be seeking general advice, not specific solutions, and must disclose this help. Math problems are often called "exercises"; note that you cannot get stronger by watching someone else exercise!

You MAY NOT post homework problems to internet websites seeking solutions. You may post questions asking for clarifications and alternate perspectives on concepts and results we have covered. Students whose solutions are extremely similar to solutions posted on internet websites may find their work closely scrutinized for signs of plagiarism on future assignments.

You MAY NOT ask AI systems to solve your homework problems for you, or to write solutions to your homework problems. These are both skills that you are meant to develop for yourself.

On exams, you may not seek help from any other person, or from any resource other than those expressly permitted. You also may not provide such help to any other student in the course, and you may not distribute exam questions to any other person, or upload them to websites.

Attendance will be taken using iClicker Cloud. You may only mark yourself present if you are actually present in class when attendance is taken, and you may not enable other students to circumvent this policy in any way.

Grade apportionment

A numeric score will be computed by the following formula, and then converted to a letter grade. In rare cases, this formula may be modified for certain individuals to address unusual circumstances.

• Gateway : 5 points towards final grade
• Midterm 1: 10 points towards final grade
• Midterm 2: 15 points towards final grade
• Final exam: 20 points towards final grade
• First project (individual): 5 points towards final grade
• Second project (in groups): 5 points towards final grade
• Final project: 5 points towards final grade
• Written Homework: 15 points towards final grade, lowest score will be dropped
• WeBWorK: 15 points towards final grade, lowest score will be dropped
• Attendance points: 5 points towards final grade
• Class Participation: There are no specific points for class participation. However, if you are very close to the cutoff for a grade (< 0.5% points away from the cutoff), your section instructor may recommend moving you up to the next grade level if you have been an active participant in class and have contributed to a positive learning environment.

We expect that the conversions between numbers and grades will be given by the following table. We will not use a curve more harsh than this. For example, if you have a score of 95%, you will receive at least an A, no matter how many of your class mates do similarly.

In past terms, our cutoffs have been very close to these and we have not needed much of a positive curve. Students should expect the cutoffs to be as above, and be pleasantly surprised if they do a bit better.