Instructor: Gregor Kovacic
Office: 419 Amos Eaton
Phone: 276-6908
E-mail: kovacg at rpi dot edu
Weekly homework will be assigned, collected, and graded. I strongly encourage collaboration on the homework. You are encouraged to work in groups in which you discuss the problems and help each other out if you are stuck. However, copying is forbidden, as is partitioning the homework among several students without everybody's participation on every problem. More precisely, you may collaborate as much as you want, as long as in the end you write your homework down without looking at someone else's paper.
I strongly suggest that you at least look at the problems and start thinking about them on the day they are assigned. Mathematical analysis is a very hard subject, so many problems will be hard and you will need some time to think about how to solve them, so do not delay the homework until the night before it is due. No late homework will be accepted.
It is strictly forbidden to fish for solutions of recycled problems and copy them into yours, or to copy other students' solutions. Such behavior will be considered the highest breach of academic integrity and will land you in the office of the Dean of Students with the recommendation that you be expelled from the class with a failing grade. It will also earn you zero points for the entire assignment on which the copying occurs.
There will be two tests. Whie the second test will largely focus on the material in the second part of the course, it may contain references to earlier material, and you will be responsible for knowing that. There will also be an optional final exam during the finals week for those students who will not be happy with their previous grades. The rules for this final exam are explained below.
I am expecting to use the following grading rules: The total homework grade will constitute at least 40% of the final grade. The two tests will each constitute at most 30% of your final grade, respectively.
You can opt out of the homework, and just be graded on the two tests. If you do this, it is at your own peril.
The grade cutoffs will be no stricter than
| A | A- | B+ | B | B- | C+ | C | C- | D+ | D | F |
| 92-100 | 90-92 | 87-89 | 82-86 | 80-82 | 77-79 | 72-76 | 70-72 | 67-69 | 60-66 | < 60 |
and may end up being quite a bit looser, but I won't know where exactly they will be until the very end.
If you are unhappy with the grade that you got from the homework and the tests, you can give it up, and instead take the optional final exam during the finals week. That grade will supersede all the previous grades, so do not take the final exam unless you are sure that you will do better than during the semester.