Math 98 Spring 2025

Course Information

Instructor: Tom Schang, tom_schang@berkeley.edu. Please only contact me via e-mail for personal issues. Otherwise, come to office hours or use our Ed forum.
Lectures: Tuesday and Thursday 9:30-11:00 am (009) and 11:00-12:30 (010) in Evans hall B3A.
Registration: to register for the 9:30 am class, use the course code #21933 in Cal Central. For the 11:00 am class, use the course code #21934.
Office hours: ~~Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:30-1:30 pm in Evans 1041.~~ As of March 5: by appointment.
Other course websites: Ed forum, which should be used for almost all communication (content and logistics); bCourses, where confidential information will be located (including homework submissions, course grades, and solutions).
Credit: I want to thank Michael Heinz for providing me his course materials; most of the course is directly from him.

Course Policies

Behaviour: this course is a fast 5 lecture course where we go from little-to-no idea how to program to being able to complete 128A assignments. As such, it is imperative that have a welcoming learning environment where everyone feels safe participating, trying, and making mistakes. Always be respectful, helpful, and encouraging of each other. Offensive/rude/hurtful comments and behaviour are not tolerated and may negatively impact your course grade.
Grades: there will be 4 homeworks and 1 project. Homeworks are worth 15 points each. They are graded for effort/completion. The project is worth 40 points and is graded for correctness. A pass in the class requires a score of 70% or better on the homeworks and 70% or better on the project.
Extensions, etc.: everyone has exactly 3 late days. Only one late day can be used per assignment (so that I can post solutions for the class before the next assignment is due). I know this course is fast. I want to keep everyone pushing through so that it is out of the way before the first round of midterms comes.
Academic Integrity. In this class we are all trying to learn a new language as fast as possible. Please work together on everything. When it comes to completing class assignments, some things that are explicitly not allowed are looking/copying someone else's code directly or from an online resource. Instead, collaborate by describing your algorithm with words, pictures, etc., but figure out the implementation details individually. For online resources, a good guideline is do not search the problem word for word. Instead, figure out one of the steps you need to solve the problem (for example, creating an n-by-n identity matrix).
Inclusivity. I want to help each and every one of you succeed, with each and every one of your diverse identities. If you ever feel unsafe or unwelcome, I truly want to know and fix what I am doing, even if you let me know through an e-mail or a friend or whatever feels comfortable.
DSP. If you are a student with DSP accommodations that apply to this course, please contact me ASAP. The course is very short, so it is very important that you let me know before it's too late.

Resources

MATLAB: MATLAB can be downloaded for free using the UC Berkeley campus license (here). I am not able to help with MATLAB installation issues. Please check the support links on this website if you require assistance.
Tutorials/books:
Christos Xenophontos, A Beginner’s Guide to MATLAB;
R. J. Braun, Beginning MATLAB Exercises;
Fan and Van Loan, Insight through Computing;
Hahn and Valentine, Essential MATLAB for Engineers and Scientists;
Cornell's intro to computing using MATLAB course (particularly lectures 2-14). Please note that this website is not to be shared outside of this course, I received special permission to share it with students in this course only. I think this is a great resource; this is how I learned MATLAB!
Practice Problems:
Project Euler;
HackerRank, especially the sections on algorithms and mathematics;
Geeks for Geeks, especially the section of mathematical algorithms.

Schedule

Lecture	Topic	Resources	Homework
Lecture 1 (01/23)	Coding basics, math in MATLAB	slides, annotated, Braun tutorial	homework 1 (due 01/31) code
Lecture 2 (01/28)	Matrices and vectors	slides, annotated, code, Braun tutorial	homework 1 (due 01/31) code
Lecture 3 (01/30)	Functions	slides, code, MATLAB docs on functions	homework 2 (due 02/05)
Lecture 4 (02/04)	Control flow	slides, annotated, code, MATLAB docs on control flow	homework 3 (due 02/10)
Lecture 5 (02/06)	Plotting	slides, MATLAB docs on plot and on scatter	homework 4 (due 02/12)
			final project (due 02/19)

All assignments (homeworks and project) should be turned in on bCourses. If you submit after 11:59 pm, your submission will automatically marked late (remember you only get 3 late days in total and only one per assignment).
Solutions to homework are released 24 hours after the due date on bCourses.