Mathematics 110
Fall, 2008
Tu Th 3:40-5 PM, 3 Evans Hall

Course control number 54739
Current Enrollment information
Matrices, vector spaces, linear transformations, inner products, determinants. Eigenvectors. QR factorization. Quadratic forms and Rayleigh's principle. Jordan canonical form, applications. Linear functionals.
Professor Kenneth A. Ribet
email:
Telephone: (510) 642-0648
Fax: (510) 642-8204
Office hours (885 Evans Hall)
photo of Ken Ribet by Wen Shih

Exams

Our final exam group is the last one during exam period. Sign up for another Math 110 section if you need to get out of town early.

I have taught Math 110 three times before, once as an honors course and twice as a non-honors course in a large auditorium. See my Fall, 2002 page and my Spring, 2005 page for the non-honors courses and my Fall, 2003 page for the honors course. Each page has links to problems and solutions for the exams in the course. The non-honors midterms exams were 80-minute exams, just as ours will be.

Textbook

At Cal, we have settled on two textbooks for our Math 110 courses: Sheldon Axler's Linear Algebra Done Right and Linear Algebra by Friedberg, Insel and Spence. These are both excellent books. After a short period of indecision, I settled on the first book as our textbook for the semester. My principal reasons: I've used the Friedberg book three times in Math 110 but have never before taught with the Axler book; the second book is three times the price of the first!

Grading

Grades in this course will be based on a composite grade that includes the three exams and your homework scores. I am thinking of the following mix: 15% each midterm exam, 20% homework, 50% final exam. If you're curious, the last time I taught Math 110, there were 129 names on my spreadsheet. I gave out around 32% As, 36% Bs, 16% Cs and 16% D-F-I. Some of the students who failed had probably dropped the course before the final exam.

Syllabus and homework

The iCal calendar for our section will provide brief descriptions of each lecture in the semester as well as the homework assignments that are due each week.

Online discussion

Google Groups Math 110
Browse Archives at groups.google.com

Please register for google groups and join the group Math 110.

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