Math 322 - Applied Mathematical Analysis - Fall 2012

http://www.math.wisc.edu/~lebl/uw322-f12/

Main lecture: MWF 11:00pm - 11:50am, Van Vleck B113

Homework:

Text:

Our main text will be:

Stanley J. Farlow, Partial Differential Equations for Scientists and Engineers

As you can guess from the book this course is mainly about PDEs (partial differential equations). The book is sectioned into "lectures". The (revised, optimistic) plan is to cover lectures

1-13, 15-17, 19-28, 30-33, 36-39
(last update to plan was October 26th, some of these, such as 33 and 39 are "maybes", we'll see if we have time for them)

(each lecture in the book may take one or two actual lectures). This plan is tentative and will be adjusted (lectures skipped or added) as we go on and as time constraints will become clearer. Each lecture in the book has some recommended reading at the end.

The books that I have and know and can recommend as reading are: Zachmanoglou and Thoe Introduction to Partial Differential Equations with Applications or Berg and McGregor Elementary Partial Differential Equations.

For help on differential equations in general (mostly ODE but with a small amount of PDE material especially with respect to Fourier Series) see my book Notes on Diffy Qs.

Also here are some informal comments on the Farlow book, including random thoughts, errors and typos I found that could be useful in studying. Note that I wrote the notes with someone planning to teach with the book in mind.

Lecturer:

Jiří Lebl
Web: http://www.math.wisc.edu/~lebl/
Office: 711 Van Vleck
Office hours: MW 2pm-3pm + by appointment
Office phone: (608) 626-3298
Email: lebl at math dot wisc dot edu

Grading:

Grades will be based on the percentages below. Curve will be applied if needed. Approximate grading without curve: 92-100: A, 88-92: AB, 82-88: B, 78-82: BC, 70-78: C, 60-70: D, <60: F.

The way "curve" will work is that I may move the above breakpoints in the downwards direction (that means you may get a better grade than given above if a curve is applied). Curve will be applied in the end of the course.

Exam 1: Friday, 12th October, 5:30-7:00pm, room VV B105, 20% of your grade.

Exam 2: Wednesday, 14th November, 5:30-7:00pm, room VV B105, 20% of your grade.

Final Exam: Monday, December 17, 2:45pm-4:45pm, room VV B113, 40% of your grade. (Comprehensive)

Homework: Assigned weekly (some weeks may be skipped). Worth 20%, spot checked (spot checked means: some spot(s) of each homework checked, and all will be collected). Lowest 2 homework grades dropped (so no late homeworks).

Test Policies: No books, calculators or computers allowed on the exams or the final. One page (one sided) of handwritten notes allowed on the exams.

Interesting links:

Wolfram Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com). It's like Google for math, and sometimes very useful for checking your work without having to install anything too difficult.

For those intrepid enough see Maxima (and my favourite interface to it: wxMaxima). It is a free software computer algebra system, very useful for checking your work or doing certain tedius calculations. Although learning it can be somewhat daunting. See also Sage for another symbolic free software package.

Assuming many of you are engineers I assume you have heard of Matlab. For a free software alternative try Octave.

It never hurts to learn how to use LaTeX if you want to type up stuff with lots of math. It not only increases legibility of your work, it also increases your nerd factor by an order of magnitude (that's a good thing).

For easy to use LaTeX frontends try TeXworks (Linux, Windows, Mac) or TeXShop (Mac). Or perhaps give LyX (Linux, Windows, Mac) a go. Lyx might be the easiest of the bunch, though it is not as flexible.