Course Syllabus

Jump to Today

Instructor:  Benjamin Ciotti, bciotti@ucsd.edu
Email is the best way to contact me.  DO NOT use the Canvas inbox.

Office hours:  These will take place in the hour immediately following lecture at the same location and if you have questions that were not answered in the lecture then you must come to office hours and let me know.  Info on your TA's office hours can be found on the Contact Info page. 

Credit Hours: 4

Prerequisite: MATH 20C (or MATH 21C) or MATH 31BH with a grade of C- or better.

Catalog Description: Change of variable in multiple integrals, Jacobian, line integrals, Green's theorem.  Vector fields, gradient fields, divergence, curl.  Spherical/cylindrical coordinates.  Taylor series in several variables.  Surface integrals, Stoke's theorem.  Conservative fields.

Textbook: Vector Calculus (6th Edition), by Marsden and Tromba.

Subject Material: We will cover parts of chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of the text.  For a more detailed list of chapter sections and dates, see the Lecture Schedule.

Expected Materials: You are expected to have a webcam, microphone, camera, and stable wi-fi connection.  The following resources may be of use:

It is appreciated when you turn your camera on during lecture (even when you aren't requested to).  Lectures and office hours may be recorded (minus faces).  If the any of the expected materials or recording will present an issue, then please contact me as soon as possible. 

Reading Assignments: Reading the book is very important.  You are responsible for reading the sections of the text listed in the Lecture Schedule before the corresponding lecture. 

Lecture Notes & Recordings:  Lecture note PDFs will be posted in the weekly modules.  Lecture recordings will be synced to the Media Gallery generally within a few hours of lecture.  This frees you to pay more attention in lecture.  You can look at the notes or recordings later to review and fill in any gaps in your notes.

Attendance and Participation:  Attending live lectures is an important part of this class.  Students who can not regularly attend lecture at the scheduled times are not advised to take this class.  You are encouraged to participate during lecture by, e.g.,  having your camera on, asking and answering questions, and staying for office hours when there are parts of lecture that you do not understand.   

More details on the participation policy are TBA. 

Homework: Homework is a very important aspect of the class.  It is where most of the learning takes place.  You must do your homework on your own, without help from other people or answer keys.  Homework will be submitted on Gradescope (which should accessed via the Canvas course navigation menu on the left).  Please follow the Gradescope submission guidelines that can be found here.  Due dates will be in the weekly Modules.

If and when you are confused on how to do a homework problem, you are expected to try to figure it out yourself (spend at least 20 minutes) first, and then to seek help as necessary, either from your professor, TA, office hours, discussion, lecture, study group, tutor, or Piazza.

To receive full credit, ensure your homework submissions are oriented, legible, and that you have correctly matched the pages and problems.  Submit as a PDF file. You may type them or use paper or use a stylus. 

Homework Grading: For the purpose of determining course grades, your homework score will max out at 90% of the available homework points.  This means, that if, e.g., there are 50 HW points possible, then a HW total of 45 points or more will count as 100% in the homework category for the purpose of final course grade calculations.  So you can miss some assignments and suffer no penalty whatsoever.  It is your responsibility to stay abreast of due dates and get your homework in on time.

Late Homework: You can turn in your homework up to 12 hours past the due date for a 5% penalty.  Past this, the solutions will typically be posted and no more late homework will be accepted so do not ask.   I know that everyone has occasional issues (e.g., health, family, conflicts, technical, etc) so I created a policy to take these into account without doing so at the expense of the rest of the class.  

Announcements:  The Canvas Announcements page will be my regular method of communication with the class outside of the classroom and it is your responsibility to stay apprised of its contents.  You may get email notifications (these can be adjusted under your Account settings under Notifications) but you should always view announcements in Canvas (and not your email) to ensure the most up-to-date information. 

Academic Support:  The university offers tutoring and supplemental instruction (SI) for Math 20E because they really want you to succeed.  These services are free (included with your tuition) and you'd be a fool not to take advantage.  They are proven to improve performance.  See the Academic Support page for details including the SI and tutoring schedules.

Piazza:  You are welcome to ask and answer questions on the class Piazza page. Please be in the habit of including pictures with your posts so the readers and potential responders of your posts can easily understand your post without having to get out their textbook or other resource which you may be referencing.  You can easily take screen snips (Shift+Win+S on PC) and simply paste them right into your posts.   You can also use TeX symbols in Piazza fairly easily (see a list of symbols here or here, for example) by wrapping your expression in double dollar signs.  

Exams:  We will have three exams (including the final) this quarter.  See the Lecture Schedule for dates.  These will take place in class over Zoom during the normally scheduled class time.  You must be present and on camera for the exams so please make any necessary preparations in advance. 

Grades: Your course score will be calculated by taking the best of the following schemes:

     Scheme 1:  5% participation, 25% Homework, 20% Midterm 1, 20% Midterm 2, 30% Final Exam

     Scheme 2:  5% participation, 25% Homework, 30% Best Midterm, 40% Final Exam

     Scheme 3:  20% Homework, 25% Midterm 1, 25% Midterm 2, 30% Final Exam

So Scheme 2 is the one where you get to drop a midterm, and Scheme 3 is for students who for any reason find themselves unable to regularly attend lectures.  For such students, they can still get all the credit in the course but they will have to do well on all the exams.  

Letter grades will be assigned based on the standard grading scale:

A+ A A- B+ B B- C+ C C- F
97 93 90 87 83 80 77 73 70 < 70

The above scale may be adjusted to be more lenient, depending on the overall class performance.  Individual exams will not curved, but the averages will be made known. 

Electronic Computing Devices:  In general, electronic computing devices are not needed in this course.  If and when they are, this will generally be apparent from the context.  Graphing calculators (such as Desmos) and other computational software (such as WolframAlpha) can be helpful when working through your homework.  But software should never be used as a crutch or in place of learning.  You should not use it if you are not confident in your ability do a computation by hand.  A reliance on software may result in the underdevelopment of the skills necessary for passing this course and the courses that follow.  Software will not be required nor recommended on any exam in this course, so for that reason it is recommended that you not rely upon it for studying or homework.

Collaboration:  You should never search the internet for how to do a problem.  Never allow someone to give you too much of a hint.  Never give someone too much of a hint.  Never simply show someone how to do a problem.  If you want to work with someone else, make sure both of you have put in serious time and thinking about the problem alone.  Then, if you have success working together, write up your solutions separately and credit each other by name.  All solutions must be written by you and you alone and be based off your own understanding and in your own words.  Copying homework solutions is not allowed.

Academic Dishonesty:  It is essential that all students adhere to the UCSD Policy on Integrity of Scholarship. This includes adherence to the course policies detailed in this syllabus as well as exam policies which will be posted before each exam.  Please familiarize yourself with the Canvas Academic Integrity page.  Cases of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Academic Integrity Office (AIO). 

AI has become a bigger issue since COVID.  Currently, the AIO is processing a very large number of cases from cheating cases in previous quarters.  I have submitted dozens of cases in recent quarters.  The cases have included posting course materials to online sites, seeking homework help from online sites,  copying other students’ work on homework and exams, hiring people to do students’ work, and on and on.  None of these are allowed.  I take the issue of integrity seriously because it is my job to do so and because cheating hurts the rest of the class, the reputation of the school, and the value of UCSD degree. 

To be clear:  you should never post this class’s syllabus, calendar, homework sets, solutions, exams, lecture notes, or other materials to online cheating sites or resource-accumulation sites.  The act of doing so is a serious violation of copyright law and UCSD’s academic integrity policies.

 

The class will be notified in the event that significant changes are made to the syllabus.

Course Summary:

Course Summary
Date Details Due