Mr B's Math Blog

Math 129 (spring 2012): Quiz keys II

2012-02-01T18:30:00.000-08:00

Math 350 (spring 2012): Quiz keys I

2012-01-30T16:00:00.000-08:00

Math 129 (spring 2012): Exam 1

2012-01-28T17:00:00.000-08:00

Math 129 (spring 2012): Quiz keys I

2012-01-22T22:30:00.000-08:00

Quiz 10, the follow-up to Exam 1, contained a problem that could not be done with the tools we currently have at our disposal. Therefore, the points earned on Quiz 10 are bonus points added to your quiz score. Furthermore, anyone who correctly set up the equation got full credit: 20 out of 20. (We will see this problem again when we're able to solve it in full.)

Math Student Survival Guide

2011-12-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

Although there is no magical secret for succeeding in a math class, there are some things that are universally true. Here's one:

You will not pass your math class
unless you spend enough time on it.

What does “enough time” mean? There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Some students breeze through math with a minimum of effort and others have to struggle. If you are taking prealgebra or algebra in college, you have probably struggled with math on occasion. If you plan to succeed, you must plan to find the necessary time for reading math, studying math, and doing your math homework. One important tip:

Do some math every day.

There will be days when you just don't have a lot of time. This happens. But do some math anyway, even if it's just 15 minutes of review or solving a homework problem. Doing some math every day is a recipe for success and maintains forward progress. “Saving up” your math for weekends is almost always a mistake.

Here's another important truth:

Students who get stuck need to get help.

It's amazing how many students quietly fail their classes instead of getting help. Community colleges are all about helping students. Even when state funding is tight and budgets are cut, we scramble to provide assistance opportunities to our students. Here's a list:

Questions during class (ask them!)
Questions during office hours (know them!)
Tutorial sessions (attend them!)
Learning Resource Center (go there!)
Student Support Services (there's an entire building!)
Study groups (team up with classmates!)

I apologize for all of the exclamation points. Teachers get a little excited when repeating advice for the millionth time, but be aware of this: We have a lot of experience seeing what works and what doesn't. Your mileage may vary, but some (maybe a lot) of what your teacher says may apply to you.

Be an active learner and take charge of your learning. The teacher can't teach you without your consent and your active participation. Take responsibility for your education.

Course syllabi

2011-08-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for our course syllabus, it's available in pdf form from the Box.net widget in the left-hand sidebar. Just click on the one you want and you will be able to download it.

In the sidebar you'll also find some potentially useful links that you may want to try out. The Internet has many kinds of math aids and tutorials, including videos, that might be helpful. For example, click here to see a list of Khan Academy's algebra videos and here for videos on calculus.

Note: The whole point of Quiz 0, which you receive on the first day of class, is to give you some points for showing you know how to follow directions.

Math 402 (fall 2010): Final Exam

2010-12-17T09:30:00.000-08:00

The only mistake to occur with any frequency on page 1 was forgetting the square on the magnitude of w in the denominator.

The key shows the solution I expected in Problem 3. However it was also reasonable to compute both vector PQ and vector PR and check whether they're parallel.

How many times did I tell you that r = 〈x, y, z〉? That's what you needed for part (c). Several people did not recognize r as a vector, but it had to be, because I was asking for divergence. You can't take the divergence of a scalar function.

Two students did Problem 8 by computing three line integrals and adding up the results. One got the right answer. Lots more people got the right answer using Green's theorem, which was definitely the way to go.

Problem 9 was a disappointment because of the number of people who insisted on trying to do a triple integral. It's a surface S. That automatically means double integration. What's more, the only parameters are supposed to be r and θ. There's no integral or limits of integration involving z. Finally, the formula for dS has r already built into it, so no need to add another. The integrand, of course, was r² because it was a moment of inertia about the z axis.

Problem 11 caused trouble with limits of integration. Both cylindrical and spherical coordinates were reasonable choices, but rectangular coordinates were strongly contra-indicated. I guess people liked the idea of using limits from −3 to 3 for x and y, but that's for a square, not for a circle.

Math 402 (fall 2010): Exam 5

2010-12-08T23:00:00.000-08:00

Math 402 (fall 2010): Quizzes 32 to 34

2010-12-03T15:00:00.000-08:00

Math 402 (fall 2010): Quizzes 28 to 31

2010-11-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

Math 402 (fall 2010): Exam 4

2010-11-27T19:00:00.000-08:00

The intersecting sphere and cylinder

2010-11-22T19:00:00.000-08:00

The bonus task I gave you last week involved looking at the curve created by the intersection of a sphere and cylinder. For purposes of this demonstration, I will assume that the sphere has radius 4 and the cylinder correspondingly has diameter 4. Thus the sphere is x² + y² + z² = 16 and the cylinder is (x − 2)² + y² = 4.

We will now show that the self-intersection curve crosses itself at right angles at the point (4, 0, 0).

Here is one way to do it:

We parameterize the path by r = xi + yj + zk, where we need to find appropriate functions for x, y, and z. Let's rewrite everything in cylindrical coordinates, because that form is more useful in this situation. The sphere's equation is r² + z² = 16, the cylinder is r = 4 cos θ, and the intersection curve we are looking for is r = (r cos θ)i + (r sin θ)j + zk.

Since the cylinder requires that r = 4 cos θ, we can substitute for r in the expression for the curve r. We obtain r = (4 cos θ cos θ)i + (4 cos θ sin θ)j + zk.

What can we do about that z? According to the sphere, we must have z = (16 − r²)^1/2. Substituting r = 4 cos θ into the equation for z, we get z = (16 − (4 cos θ)²)^1/2 = (16 − 16 cos² θ)^1/2 = 4 sin θ. We can now write our curve with θ as our parameter:

r(θ) = (4 cos θ cos θ)i + (4 cos θ sin θ)j + (4 sin θ)k.

Observe that r(0) = 4i and r(π) = 4i, indicating that the curve intersects itself for θ = 0 and θ = π. If we find the tangent vectors at these two points, the angle between them is supposed to be a right angle. Of course, the easiest way to find tangent vectors is to use r′(θ), the velocity vector:

r′(θ) = (−8 cos θ sin θ)i + 4( cos² θ − sin² θ)j + (4 cos θ)k.

Plug in θ = 0 and θ = π to find the pertinent tangent vectors:

r′(0) = 4j + 4k
r′(π) = 4j − 4k.

If we dot these vectors we get zero. The vectors are perpendicular, so the intersection curve crosses itself at ninety degrees. QED.

Math 402 (fall 2010): Quizzes 21 to 27

2010-11-10T13:35:00.000-08:00

Math 402 (fall 2010): Exam 3

2010-10-20T23:00:00.000-07:00

Math 402 (fall 2010): Quizzes 17 to 20

2010-10-15T19:00:00.000-07:00

Math 402 (fall 2010): Quizzes 11 to 16

2010-10-06T19:15:00.000-07:00

Math 402 (fall 2010): Exam 2

2010-09-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

Math 402 (fall 2010): Quizzes 8 to 10

2010-09-20T08:50:00.000-07:00

Math 402 (fall 2010): Exam 1

2010-09-12T18:30:00.000-07:00

Math 402 (fall 2010): Quizzes 1 through 7

2010-09-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

Computing a weighted average

2010-08-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

It's how your grades are computed

It's not too difficult to turn the points you earn on an assignment into a percentage. You just divide them by the total number of points possible and move the decimal point two places. For example, if you get 15 points on a 20-point quiz, your percentage score is 15/20 = 0.75 = 75%. No problem.

However, I do not use just a point system to figure grades for a class. I use a weighted average of the scores you earn in three categories: HWQ (homework & quizzes, lumped together), Exams (the chapter tests), and Final (the comprehensive final exam at the end of the semester). For example suppose that HWQ is 15% of your grade, Exams are 70% of your grade, and the Final is 15%. (If you check, you'll see that the percentages add up to 100%, as they should. I may vary these weights depending on the number of exams I give.)

Suppose that you earn 72% of all the points possible on the homework and quizzes, you average 84% on the exams, and you get 79% on the final. Did you earn a B? Let's find out. The weighted average is computed by multiplying each score by its percentage weight and then adding everything together. Recall that the percentage weight of HWQ is 15% of your grade, which we can write as the decimal 0.15. For Exams we have 70% or 0.70, and the Final is 15% or 0.15, just like HWQ. The formula for grades is

Course Grade = HWQ*0.15 + Exams*0.70 + Final*0.15.

Using the scores we pretended you got during the semester, your course grade would be given by

Course Grade = 72%(0.15) + 84%(0.70) + 79%(0.15) = 81.45%.

Congratulations! You earned a B for the class, with just a little bit to spare.

It's not too surprising. Most of the weight of the grade is on Exams. Homework and quizzes get only 15% because I treat them more as a learning experience. The final gets only 15% because it's only one exam. While other instructors might choose to give the final more weight, I prefer to limit the importance of any single exam.

In general

If you ever want to compute a weighted average for any reason, the main thing to keep in mind that the weights have to add up to 100%. If, for example, you wish to compute the weighted average of four numbers, X₁, X₂, X₃, and X₄, you can do it as long as the weights, w₁, w₂, w₃, and w₄, add up to 100%. Then you compute the sum of their respective products:

Weighted average = X₁w₁ + X₂w₂ +X₃w₃ +X₄w₄.

That's all there is to it. Of course, if you choose to use equal weights, so that w₁ = w₂ = w₃ = w₄ = 25% = 0.25, your result will just be the usual arithmetic average. (It would be simpler to add up the numbers and divide by 4.)

I'll leave it to you to figure out what to do if there are more than four numbers for which you wish to compute a weighted average.

Math 400 (summer 2010): Final Exam

2010-08-01T15:45:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quiz 34

2010-07-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Exam 4

2010-07-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quizzes 31 to 33

2010-07-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quizzes 26 to 30

2010-07-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

Your in-class copies of Quiz 29 have a graph that does not match the given function. I changed the graph on the solution key to conform to the function, as you can see. (A blank copy of the corrected Quiz 29 was e-mailed to everyone on the roster earlier this week.)

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quizzes 21 to 25

2010-07-14T22:00:00.001-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Exam 3

2010-07-11T16:00:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quizzes 19 & 20

2010-07-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quizzes 16 & 18

2010-07-04T15:00:00.000-07:00

Remember: Quiz 17 involved building a box, which was formally solved in Quiz 18.

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quizzes 14 & 15

2010-06-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quizzes 12 & 13

2010-06-28T22:30:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Exam 2

2010-06-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quiz 11

2010-06-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quizzes 9 & 10

2010-06-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quizzes 6, 7, & 8

2010-06-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quizzes 4 & 5

2010-06-16T12:45:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Exam 1

2010-06-14T17:30:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quiz 3

2010-06-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

Math 400 (summer 2010): Quiz keys

2010-06-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

Math 401 (spring 2010): Exam 4

2010-05-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

Math 351 (spring 2010): Exam 4 (practice final)

2010-05-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

Math 401 (spring 2010): Quizzes 21 & 22

2010-05-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

Math 401 (spring 2010): Quizzes 17-20

2010-05-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

Math 401 (spring 2010): Exam 3

2010-04-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

Math 351 (spring 2010): Exam 3

2010-04-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

Math 401 (spring 2010): Quizzes 12 to 16

2010-04-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

Math 351 (spring 2010): Quizzes 12 to 15

2010-04-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

Math 351 (spring 2010): Exam 2

2010-03-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

Math 401 (spring 2010): Exam 2 solution key

2010-03-21T18:00:00.000-07:00

Math 351 (spring 2010): Quizzes 7-11

2010-03-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

Math 401 (spring 2010): Quizzes 1-11

2010-03-02T20:00:00.000-08:00

Math 351 (spring 2010): Exam 1 solution key

2010-02-28T17:00:00.000-08:00

Math 351 (spring 2010): Quizzes 3 to 6

2010-02-13T16:30:00.000-08:00

Math 401 (spring 2010): Exam 1 solution key

2010-02-10T23:15:00.000-08:00

Math 351 (Spring 2010): Quizzes 1 & 2

2010-01-31T23:03:00.000-08:00

Math 120 (fall 2009): Quiz solution keys

2009-11-17T22:00:00.000-08:00

Math 120 (fall 2009): Chapter 7 quiz solution keys

2009-10-08T18:00:00.000-07:00

Math 32 (Spring 2009): Exam 1 solution key

2009-05-15T17:43:00.000-07:00

Math 32 (Spring 2009): Exam 2 solution key

2009-05-15T17:41:00.001-07:00

Math 32 (spring 2009): Exam 3 solution key

2009-05-15T17:38:00.000-07:00

Math 32 (Spring 2009): Exam 4 solution key

2009-05-15T17:35:00.000-07:00

Read my book for free

2009-01-19T16:00:00.000-08:00

The manuscript of A Stroll through Calculus: A guide for the merely curious is available in four pdfs that I have posted in the Box.net window in the margin. If you choose to read Stroll as part of your essay assignment, you can download the files at your convenience. I ask only that you not repost the files anywhere else.

The Box.net window also contains the course syllabi for Math 32 and Math 402, the two classes I'm teaching this semester. If you lose the copy you received in class, you can always download a copy from here.

Good luck this semester!

Fall semester 2008: grades

2008-12-21T11:30:00.000-08:00

Although everyone should have their grades by now, assuming you have an active e-mail account linked to your entry in the college database, I'm posting the final exam results and semester grades here, just in case. The format is exactly the same as the grade lists I used to post in our classroom.

Math 25: Arithmetic

Math 402: Calculus III

Teach to learn

2008-08-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

If you're a calculus student and it fits into your schedule, consider being a student tutor this semester. The math department always has need for students to work as peer tutors in the Math Learning Center and the Learning Resource Center. Calculus students are especially encouraged to work as student tutors because they are familiar with more of the math curriculum than other students.

There's no better way to sharpen your math skills than to explain to other students how to solve problems. I heartily recommend it!

Math 402 (Summer 2008): Course grades

2008-08-02T21:31:00.000-07:00

The final exam has been graded and I've double-checked the scores. Congratulations on an impressive class average of 82.9% (which was sweetened only slightly by my making it possible to score up to 105% on the final exam, which one student actually did). The course grades are shown below. The format is the same as what I've been using for the grade distributions that were posted in the back of our classroom. The only difference is the addition of a column for the final exam score and editing the grade formula to take the final into account. Your composite course score is based 15% on the homework/quiz score, 70% on the chapter tests (omitting your lowest score), and 15% on the final exam.

Thank you for a very interesting summer session. I wish everyone continued success as your education progresses and I want you to know that you are welcome to call upon me if you need letters of recommendation in the future. You know where to find me, I'm sure.

The solution key for the final exam has also been posted. I hope it clears up any remaining questions you might have.

[Click on the grade chart if it's too small for you to read.]

Math 402 (Summer 2008): Bonus problem

2008-07-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

I'll add ten points to your quiz score if you write out a neat solution to the following and hand it in on Thursday:

Parameterize the sphere ρ = a in terms of φ and θ. Use the parameterization to find dS for the sphere. (Don't forget to include dφ and θ in your final answer.)

A good way to check your result is to see whether the integration of 1 over the entire sphere produces the correct value for its surface area. Or use it to see if you get the right answer (10π) for Quiz 32.

An invitation to stroll through calculus

2008-06-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

Summer session has begun and I have posted a pdf of the first part of the book manuscript for A Stroll through Calculus. (To download it, just click on the filename in the Box.net widget in the left sidebar.) It's a casual introduction to the ideas behind calculus and is written at a deliberately nontechnical level. I wrote it to help people get some notion why calculus is so powerful and what its fundamental concepts are. The book begins with a discussion of measuring area and how one can generalize this notion to cover a broad range of useful computations.

Anyone who wants to take a look at it is welcome to download the 1.3 megabyte file and peruse it at leisure. I would, however, greatly appreciate hearing what people think of it. Use the button in the left sidebar to e-mail me with feedback.

Thanks!

The 50-minute class period is dead

2007-08-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Fall 2007 semester, our first term under the compressed calendar system. When the faculty voted in favor of trimming a week and half from the 18-week semester, it became necessary to lengthen class periods to make up for the lost time. Under the old system, a 5-unit class usually met daily for 18 weeks. That's a total of 5 × 18 = 90 class hours. A normal class "hour" is 50 minutes, so we end up with 90 × 50 = 4500 minutes. We have to fit those minutes into 16.5 weeks.

One more complication: Most classes under the compressed calendar are offered on only two- or four-day schedules. Daily classes are now few. Class periods must be longer to make up for both fewer weeks and fewer days. My Math 100 class this semester meets four days a week, Monday through Thursday, from 7:00 till 8:05, a 65-minutes period. The total number of minutes for the compressed semester is 16.5 × 4 × 65 = 4290. That turns out to be just over 95% of the usual 4500 minutes, which is enough to comply with state education requirements. We will recover some additional time because fewer class meetings should mean less time lost to settling down at the beginning or packing up at the end.

The compressed calendar is full of challenges, making it more difficult to create schedules that fit together neatly. Take careful note of the beginning and ending times of your classes, because these vary significantly from what they used to be.

Good luck with your classes in this semester of experimentation.

Summer session 2007: Welcome to Math 402

2007-06-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

In some ways, Calculus III is a re-run of Calculus I (derivatives) and Calculus II (integrals). We are going to differentiate and integrate functions again, but this time in higher dimensions. Instead of limiting ourselves to functions of one variable, as we did in the past, we are going to deal with functions that have two or three (or more) variables. Calculus III will therefore involve familiar operation, but in unfamiliar contexts. Your basic differentiation and antidifferentiation skills will be employed in new and more realistic situations. In particular, physics students will recognize that many of our Calculus III theorems relate directly to discoveries in electromagnetism and the properties of gravitation.

You have access to several sources of assistance. One is ARC's own Learning Resource Center, where tutors help students with their problems. Unfortunately, we have relatively few tutors who are able to provide much help with Calculus III, so it may be difficult to get the assistance you need. You can click the sidebar entry for our Larson/Hostetler/Edwards calculus text to access the student aids provided by the publisher, which include www.CalcChat.com and on-line practice exams for each chapter. You should also try out http://Hotmath.com, for which I have an access code that I'll be sharing with the class.

If you lose your syllabus, you can download a pdf copy from this website. Click on the appropriate sidebar link.

As part of your Quiz 0 assignment, you have read this blog entry and now you need to send your instructor an e-mail message. Either click on the sidebar where is says “about Math 402” or write me directly, but don't forget to include Math 402 in the subject line. (That's something you should do for all messages you send me about the class this summer.)

Good luck!

Spring 2007 final exam schedule

2007-05-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

I have worked out my schedule during this semester's finals. If you can't see the image clearly enough, just click on it. I may be around at times other than the listed office hours, so don't hesitate to stop by my office in Howard Hall if you're on campus. If you need to talk to me when I'm not at school, you can always e-mail me at barcela@arc.losrios.edu.

A Hallmark moment

2006-10-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

Math 342: Problem 7.3.17

It's always entertaining when your teacher gets stuck on a homework problem during a review session for an exam. The problem in question, Exercise 17 from Sec. 7.3, concerns a greeting card company that stashes its cards in two warehouses and wants to ship them as economically as possible to its outlets in San Jose and Memphis. Since I think you're owed a proper explanation of how to solve the problem, let me pick apart the many components of this exercise and try to give you a good and reasonably straightforward solution.

First of all, we're given a broad (and perhaps confusing) hint about what to use as variables. Let's assign them this way: x will be the number of boxes of cards shipped from Warehouse I to San Jose and y will be the number of cards shipped from Warehouse I to Memphis. Since San Jose really wants 350 boxes, it will still need 350 − x boxes (if any) after receiving the shipment of x boxes from Warehouse I. Therefore the balance, 350 − x, must come from Warehouse II. Similarly, since Memphis wants 250 boxes, it will receive y from Warehouse I and 250 − y from Warehouse II.

The object of this exercise is to minimize the total shipping costs in filling the orders from the two stores. We're given this cost grid:

We conclude therefore, that the total cost of shipping the cards from the two warehouses to the two stores will be

z = 25x + 23(x − 350) + 22y + 21(250 − y).

I'm expressing the cost in pennies so as to dispense with the decimal points for now. As we saw in class, when you multiply this out and collect like terms, the object function reduces to

z = 2x + y + 13,300.

Now we need to find a feasible region in the xy plane at whose vertices we can check the object function. Let's list what we know:

Warehouse I has only 500 boxes of cards in stock, so

x + y ≤ 500.

Warehouse II has only 290 boxes of cards in stock, so

(350 − x) + (250 − y) ≤ 290.

When we remove the parentheses and collect like terms, this becomes

600 − x − y ≤ 290,

so

−x − y ≤ −310,

and (dividing by −1 and reversing the inequality)

x + y ≥ 310.

When we graph these two inequalities together, we get two parallel lines and the region between them:

We already know that x and y are both nonnegative, so we care only about points in quadrant I. We must also have 350 − x ≥ 0 and 250 − y ≥ 0 since these are the number of boxes being shipped from Warehouse II. The first condition implies that x ≤ 350 and the second requires that y ≤ 250. When we include these conditions on the graph, we get our feasible region for this problem:

We can now start reading off our vertices. The points (310, 0) and (350, 0) lie on the x axis. The points (350, 150) and (250, 250) are also easy to read from the graph. The remaining vertex lies on the intersection of the line y = 250 with the line x + y = 310. If we plug in 250 for y, we find that x must be 60. Our last point is therefore (60, 250). We can fill in our points and compute the values of the object function at each one:

As you can see, the object function is minimized when x = 60 and y = 250. That means San Jose gets 60 boxes from Warehouse I and 350 − x = 350 − 60 = 290 boxes from Warehouse II, while Memphis gets all of its order from Warehouse I (nothing from Warehouse II). Since we've been expressing the cost in pennies, we should convert it to dollars as we conclude that the minimum shipping cost is $136.70.

Note: This problem could have been done as a four-variable linear programming problem, using the techniques that appear later in this chapter. However, with a creative choice of variables it was possible to solve it with only two variables. That permitted us to do it with a graph in the xy plane. Unfortunately, we won't be going on to those sections of the book that allow us to do more complicated linear programming problems.

Sharon Olson-Hansen

2006-10-15T02:30:00.000-07:00

We say goodbye to a dear colleague

It may seem greedy to complain that we had only a year to bid farewell to Sharon, but I'm going to complain anyway. We have been robbed of a dear friend, a cherished colleague, and a great teacher. We are weakened in every way by her loss. The entire mathematics department—the whole college—is in mourning. I can scarcely even begin to imagine the magnitude of the grief among her family members.

Sharon came to us in the fall of 1988 with a full-time faculty appointment for one semester. I knew what she was going through, because I had joined the ARC faculty one year earlier under the same circumstances. When I accepted my appointment, with no guarantee of a subsequent assignment, I had to give up the security of my civil service position in the State Treasurer's Office in a gamble that it would all work out. Sharon made a similar decision about her position as a senior faculty member at Del Campo High School: her seniority and her priority for the best teaching assignments were surrendered when she took the temporary ARC job.

When Sharon arrived, I had just won my wager and was beginning a new tenure-track appointment. She was not quite as lucky. There was no assignment available for her when her fall semester appointment expired. Sharon was reduced to a part-time teaching position during the spring, but she hung in there, hoping that a new opportunity would present itself for fall. Fortunately, new positions were approved for fall semester for the math department and we snatched her up for a full-time appointment. It has always been a particular point of pride with me that I was on the hiring committee that sent Sharon's name to the college president as a finalist for a permanent faculty position. It was one of the best decisions we ever made.

During her years of full-time service on the ARC math faculty, 1989-2005, Sharon demonstrated how important one determined and dedicated person can be even in a large organization. She was a tireless worker on behalf of her colleagues and her students. She served as department chair, a position with plenty of responsibilities and minimal benefits, requiring both an attentive ear and diplomatic skills. Her success in the position was so great that people were always trying to talk her into a second term, but she wisely resisted. Besides, she was busy with her work on the college's facilities, making sure that our planning process was fully informed of the practical needs of instructors and students, the people who actually occupied and used those facilities. Sharon chaired the committee that drafted the facilities chapter of the college's accreditation self-study, making a significant contribution to the excellent evaluation ARC later received from the visiting accreditation team.

Sharon was an early supporter of our highly speculative plan to put Howard Hall in our educational master plan, back in those days when no such building was even on the drawing board. When the college administration revealed an initiative to construct a new faculty office building on campus, we were first in line with our documented need for a new facility. (And, yes, we did succeed in getting it named “Howard Hall,” after our late dean and vice president of instruction.) We're going to miss having Sharon's help in facilities planning as the renovation of the campus center looms on the horizon, but we'll do our best to remember her lessons and dedication. It will be so much more difficult without her.

Some of Sharon's students planned to try to get Sharon the Instructor of the Year award during the 2005-06 school year. They were going against the odds, of course, nominating an instructor who was gone from the campus and fated never to return, but it was a noble and kind gesture by students who were devoted to their teacher. In truth, it should have been only a matter of time before Sharon was properly recognized as one of the college's most skilled and thoughtful instructors. The loss to our students is as great as the loss to colleagues and campus. One of our small comforts is the thought that Sharon's students are part of her legacy, and their experiences with her will last throughout their lives.

The spring of 2005 was difficult for Sharon. She never felt entirely well and the cause was eventually traced by her doctors to a gall bladder problem. Or so they thought. She had the gall bladder removed at the end of the school year and returned to the classroom for the 2005 summer session, but her problems continued. The doctors began to suspect liver problems. She turned her summer session class over to a substitute and continued her search for a definitive diagnosis and treatment. On June 29, I ran into Sharon and her son Ryan at a local Davis restaurant and she invited me to join them for lunch. She was in a festive mood, telling me they had just received good news on her prognosis: the liver problem was manageable and she was greatly relieved. Later she told me that false hope had given her and her family their happiest day after weeks of worry.

Immediately thereafter she learned the doctors had been wrong in their optimistic assessment. Sharon composed a message to her math department colleagues, sharing the bad news. We were all aghast to learn she had inoperable pancreatic cancer, but she was determined to fight it long enough to see her sons graduate from school: Colin from San Diego State in December and Ryan from Da Vinci High School in June. Despite the long odds, she succeeded, as those who knew her always believed she would.

Let me leave the last word to Sharon herself, from her message to her colleagues back in July 2005:

I want you all to know, that I have always been so proud to be a part of this department. This is not some PR statement. I am always bragging about what a great job I have and what fascinating people I work with from faculty, to clerical and management staff, and all the other support staff—tutors, IA's, computer techs, ... Teaching gave me a sense of satisfaction that I am desperately going to miss. I loved those “Ohhhhh!” moments from students, and I told them that those were what I went into teaching for. I will miss the camaraderie in the halls, the razzing at department meetings, Brother Oliver's on Fridays, department parties, walking to class with whoever, my new little decorated office with a clean bathroom down the hall!, and so much more. You have been my family for 17 years, and I will miss all of you. But I know you will continue to make this department one of the best places for students to come and learn what we all know is the beauty of math.

I am forever thankful to have been a part of that, and I love you all dearly.

—Sharon

Welcome to Fall 2006

2006-08-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

This term I am teaching four classes covering three courses: two sections of Math 342 (Business Applications Math) and one section each of Math 350 (Calculus for the Life and Social Sciences I) and Math 370 (Precalculus). I've posted the syllabi as pdfs on my public directory (see the sidebar for the link). Welcome. If you have any questions or if you are doing the assignments in Quiz 0, you can e-mail me by clicking the link in the sidebar.

We have many resources at American River College for your assistance, including the math department's Oak Tree Tutoring Center in Room 132, the Learning Resource Center, and MESA (the Math, Engineering, Science Achievement program in Room 131). My office hours will be held in Room 122 in Howard Hall at 9:00-9:50 MWF and 10:00-10:50 TuTh. Howard Hall is located at the front (west side) of the campus, next to the administration building and Raef Hall. Most math classes are held in the 160s wing of the Liberal Arts complex.

All students are automatically assigned a campus e-mail address via our iMail system. Activate your iMail account immediately so that you will be able to receive messages from the college and your instructors. Since many of you already have e-mail addresses that you may prefer to use, iMail has been set up so that you can configure it with automatic forwarding to your preferred e-mail account. iMail can be accessed from off-campus via the Internet or from any of the student computers on campus, such as those in the Library or the Learning Resource Center.

Note to Math 350 students: Your WileyPlus website address is
http://edugen.wiley.com/edugen/class/cls24755/
which you can also reach by clicking on the WileyPlus link in the sidebar.

P.S.: The word is didactic.

Area under a curve

2006-06-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

Math 400: Problem 1.1.2

How far does an object travel in 15 seconds if its velocity is given by the function v(t) = 20 + 7 cos t ft/sec? It helps to recall that we can represent the distance traveled by the area under a velocity curve. Let's look at a graph where t is the horizontal axis and y = v(t) is the vertical axis. The time units are in seconds and the velocity units are feet per second (ft/sec).

In the following graph, the red curve represents the velocity function. As we can see, the traveling object alternately slows down and speeds up (the effect of the cosine term), never going more slowly than 13 ft/sec and never going faster than 27 ft/sec. The area under the curve for time values between t = 0 and t = 15 (in blue) represents the distance traveled, if only we could figure it out. Learning how to do that is one of the goals of calculus. However, it's not too difficult to get a rough estimate.
In the second figure, I've drawn in the lines y = 13 and y = 27 to mark off the low and high points of the velocity curve. If the object were traveling only 13 ft/sec for 15 sec, then the distance it travels would be just (13 ft/sec)(15 sec) = 195 ft. That's the area of the blue rectangle that represents a lower bound on the area under the red curve. On the other hand, if the object always traveled 27 ft/sec (the upper bound on velocity), then the distance traveled would be (27 ft/sec)(15 sec) = 405 ft.

We have now figured out that the distance traveled is somewhere between 195 ft and 405 ft. That's a pretty broad range, to be sure, but we could make it better by using less extreme bounds. For example, we could try drawing triangles inside the humps of the cosine curve to estimate the area we left off while computing the lower bound. That should help. At some point, though, we would probably want something better than computing lots of different estimates. When we have the right calculus tools available, we'll be able to show that the exact distance traveled is 300 + 7 sin 15 ≈ 304.55 ft.

Escher in Sacramento

2006-06-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

Crocker Art Museum Exhibit

M. C. Escher's work will be on display at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento from June 10 to September 3 of this year. M. C. Escher: Rhythm of Illusion was originally organized by the Portland Art Museum and features 70 examples of the artist's surreal art. Many of Escher's drawings are familiar to college students, especially since they are so commonly displayed in the offices and classrooms of math teachers.

An article by The Sacramento Bee's art correspondent points out that Escher's original work can surprise people who are accustomed to seeing his art as represented by the many popular posters:

While reproductions of his work can sometimes seem cold and sterile, the actual prints have warmth, depth and texture that make them more sensual and personal than one might expect. One of the purposes of the show, [Crocker curator William] Breazeale says, is to demonstrate what a difference there is between reproductions and the real thing.

There is an official M. C. Escher website where interested parties can find many useful resources related to the artist, including a detailed picture gallery.

Try, try again

2006-05-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

While a few students used this blog to link to my e-mail address, I have to say that the spring semester's experiment was mostly a failure. I answered way more questions via e-mail, in one-to-one correspondence, than I did on this blog. As you can easily see, the one significant exception was the post on the meaning of the dot product, which worked very well for the student who raised the question and needed to see the illustrations I provided to make things clear.

Perhaps things will pick up during summer session, although the rapid pace might make it problematical again. In any case, I'll keep the blog going, at least after a fashion, and see what further use I can make of it.

What the dot product means

2006-02-21T21:07:00.000-08:00

In elementary physics we learn the work equals force times distance:

W = F × d

But it's not quite that simple when we start considering vector quantities instead of scalar. When direction enters into it, we have to account for the fact that work can be performed by a force that is not entirely aligned with the direction of the distance traveled. The cosine of the angle of divergence comes to the rescue:

W = (F cos θ) × d

Up to this point we have stuck with scalar computations. Vector notation is more powerful and useful. Let's redraw the previous figure in terms of nonparallel vectors F and d. Now we can restate our results.

If we use standard vector notation and consider what work actually equals, we end up looking at the following scalar product, which is the parallel component of F times the length of d:

W = (||F|| cos θ) × ||d||

This is something we recognize as the dot product of the vectors F and d. In fact, this is probably how the dot product came to be defined as a useful quantity in mathematics. Since we have learned to compute dot products algebraically by multiplying corresponding components and adding the results, we can compute quantities like work without having to compute angles and cosines, making the dot product into something that is easy to compute as well as useful.

Math 100: Elementary Algebra (Spring 2006)

2006-01-16T12:56:00.000-08:00

Algebra provides the basic language of math and science, which is why people study it. You need it before you can do almost anything else.

We will spend a lot of time on names and procedures. We learn the names of things as part of identifying what we are working on. Once we know what we have, then we apply the appropriate procedure to transform it into an answer or simplified result.

The main goal of elementary algebra is to give everyone the ability to work with quadratics (any anything simpler). At the end of the semester you should be comfortable with quadratic expressions like ax² + bx + c, where "quadratic" refers the to square in x² ("x squared"). Sometimes we like to give a quadratic expression a name and call it a quadratic function. Our favorite function name is f and the notation we use is

f(x) = ax² + bx + c.

If we set a quadratic function or quadratic expression equal to zero, we have a quadratic equation:

ax² + bx + c = 0.

Now the big question is, what values of x will make the equation true? The good news is that a formula exists to provide us with all the answers. It's called the quadratic formula (what a surprise). The bad news is that it will take us a while to get there and a lot of work will be required of us. Still, here is the results we're after, the quadratic formula:

We'll be working out the details as we go along.

Trying out a new tool

2005-12-19T13:50:00.000-08:00

Welcome to a wonderful test

By “test”, all I really mean is that I am giving Blogger for Word a trial run. Let’s see how this turns out.
(image placeholder)

Welcome to Spring 2006

2005-12-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

Beginning Algebra & Multivariate Calculus

I am teaching three classes during the Spring 2006 semester: two sections of Math 100, Beginning Algebra, and one of Math 402, Calculus III (multivariate).