MAA 4402/5404 SYLLABUS, FALL 2011

MAA 4402/5404 SYLLABUS, FALL 2011 Syllabus

MAA 4402: Functions of a Complex Variable
and
MAA 5404: Introduction to Complex Variables for Engineers and Physical Scientists

Fall 2011
MWF 6th period, LIT 125

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Professor David Groisser
Office: Little 308 (southeastern quadrant of building)
Phone: 392-0281 ext. 261
Email: groisser@ufl.edu. I receive a ton of email, so if you must email me, please read this first:

  • I will not answer math questions by email.
  • I will never provide any grade information by email.
  • I will not answer anonymous email, or email that lacks an informative subject line and your full name. When I look at my inbox, in the “Sender” field I should see something like “John Jones”, or “jj@ufl.edu (John Jones)”, or “johnjones@ufl.edu”; I should not see “jj@ufl.edu” or “gr8g8r@hotmail.com”. In the “Subject” field I should see something like “Can I make an appointment with you?”, not “Help! Urgent!”. Otherwise, your email will look like spam, and I’m likely to delete it unread.
  • For reasons of time and safety, I delete, without reading completely, any email that requires me to open an attachment whose nature or purpose I cannot easily determine without opening.

Office Hours: Tentatively Monday and Friday 8th period (3:00-3:50), and Tuesday 4th period (10:40-11:30). Please come early in the period or let me know to expect you later; otherwise I may not stay in my office for the whole period. See my schedule for updates. Students who can’t make scheduled office hours may see me by appointment on most weekdays (but never on a Thursday).

If you have the flu or similar contagious disease, or think you might, please do not come to my office.

Text: Brown and Churchill, Complex Variables and Applications,, 8th edition. (Make sure you have the right edition. While most of the material is the same as in the 7th edition, many section-numbers and exercise-numbers are different. You’ll find that it takes an enormous amount of time to borrow someone else’s 8th edition and make a “dictionary” between the two editions.) We will cover most of the material in Chapters 1-7. If time permits, we may cover some of Chapter 9. Topics will include:

  • quick review of the basic algebraic properties of complex numbers
  • complex-differentiability and the Cauchy-Riemann equations
  • analytic functions
  • harmonic functions
  • common elementary functions
  • integration
  • Cauchy-Goursat theorem
  • Cauchy integral formula
  • Liouville’s Theorem
  • Fundamental Theorem of Algebra
  • maximum modulus principle
  • Taylor Series
  • Laurent Series
  • residues and poles
  • the Residue Theorem
  • zeroes of analytic functions
  • unique continuation principle
  • applications of residues
  • conformal mapping (time permitting)

Exams and Grading: Your final grade will be determined by the following:

  • Handed-in homework, which will be a small subset of the assigned homework. You will be told which exercises to hand in. Students in MAA 5404 will have to hand in more homework than students in MAA 4402.
  • Two midterms (hour exams). Tentative dates for the midterms are Sept. 26 (Mon.) and Oct. 31 (Wed.).
  • Cumulative final exam, to be given on Thursday, December 15, starting at 7:30 a.m., in our usual classroom. Students are expected to arrange their post-semester travel plans accordingly, and should make those plans NOW. If you are unwilling or unable to arrange to be in town the day and time of your exam, you should not take this class. I will have little sympathy for students who claim they are “unable” to take the final exam at its scheduled time, or that to do so would pose a hardship. If you put yourself in this position, expect a zero for your final-exam grade.
  • For MAA 5404 students only: a short final project, due near the end of the semester, either on an application of complex analysis to your field of study, or on a topic in the book chapters that we are not covering. Discuss potential projects with me early in the semester, since I may want you to consult someone in your home department to get a good idea for your project.
  • Small bonuses (< 3%) may be given for exceptionally good classroom participation. ("Participation" does not simply mean "attendance"; there are no bonuses just for showing up and breathing.)

On all exams, MAA 5404 students may be required to answer more questions than MAA 4402 students, or somewhat more difficult questions.

For students registered in MAA 4402, the weightings of the grade-components will be

  • 10% for homework,
  • 25% for each midterm,
  • 40% for final exam.

For students registered in MAA 5404, the weightings of the grade-components will be

  • 10% for homework,
  • 20% for each midterm,
  • 40% for final exam,
  • 10% for final project.

I reserve the right to adjust the percentages above in individual cases if I feel that circumstances warrant.

See more about grading below for additional information.

What if you miss an exam? If you miss an exam for a valid reason, I will work out something with you that is as fair as is feasible. I almost never give make-up exams, because except in very large classes (which I don’t teach) with cookie-cutter exams (which I don’t give), there is no such thing as a fair make-up exam. To create a make-up exam that’s not extremely unfair, either to the student taking it or his/her classmates, usually takes me at least six hours. Therefore, rather than a make-up exam, usually I will just give you a “bye” and simply re-adjust the weights of the other components of your grade.

If you are going to miss an exam due to illness, you should notify me by phone or email before the exam starts (even if it’s just a few minutes before).

Homework: will be assigned daily and is expected to be done by the next class. However, I will give you more time to write up the problems that I ask you to hand in.

It is critical that you not fall behind with the uncollected homework . I cannot stress this strongly enough. Students who do not keep up with homework frequently receive D’s or worse (or drop to avoid receiving such a grade). I urge you to look at the lists of hour-exam scores linked to this page from the last time I taught this course, two years ago. All of the exam questions were examples I’d done in class and/or were identical to, or very similar to, homework questions—but not just the handed-in homework questions. The scary grade-distributions of the type seen in my 2009 class happen only when a great many students do not do all of the work they’ve been assigned (which includes not just doing 100% of their homework, but reading their textbook, studying their notes, and reviewing all necessary prerequisite material). Most of the students running D’s and E’s dropped the class after the second midterm, which is the main reason the grade-distribution you’ll see for the final exam was much better.

The assignments will be posted on the homework web page. The dates more than one day in advance are estimates, and there will be frequent updates. Assignments may also be modified in class according to how far we get on a given day. You are responsible for checking this page frequently, since in addition to updated assignments, other important information such as exam dates will be confirmed on that page. Of course, exam-date changes will also be announced in class well in advance, and more than once.

    However, if you are unaware of a changed exam-date because you weren’t in class when it was changed and you didn’t check the homework page for several days, and this causes you to miss an exam or do poorly on it, that grade (0 if you miss the exam) will still be averaged into your final grade according to the percentages above.

On most days I will not answer homework questions in class; you should see me in office hours for such questions.

Attendance policy. Much of complex analysis can be learned very well by diligently reading a textbook and doing all the exercises, so I do not want to make attendance mandatory. HOWEVER, if you choose not to attend regularly, for reasons other than those usually accepted as valid for absences (illness, accidents, weddings, funerals, family emergencies, team activities, etc.), you forfeit certain rights:

  • You may not ask questions in class.
  • You may not ask me questions outside of class. The only use you may make of my office hours is to pick up or drop off work, and you may not phone or email me.
  • You may not ask me questions about the grading of your homework or exams.
  • If you hand in homework that is more time-consuming for me to read than it ought to be, because you were voluntarily absent from class when I taught something relevant to the assignment, you may receive a zero for that homework.

In other words, if you’re regularly an absentee for voluntary reasons, you’re on your own; I will grade your work (except for unnecessarily complicated homework) but will not spend any other time on you.

For the students who do attend regularly (which I hope will be most of you!), I expect you to come to class on time and to pay attention for all 50 minutes of the period. Coming late to class is disruptive to both your instructor and your classmates.

Students with a contagious illness are asked to exercise good judgment and to be considerate of their classmates and instructor when deciding whether to come to class or my office. Coughing and sneezing in an enclosed space like a classroom or office is a wonderful way to spread germs.

More about exams. Most exam problems will be similar to homework, but there may be some problems that you won’t have seen a clone of before. Such problems will involve no new concepts, but may, for example, combine concepts from different parts of the syllabus, to see if you’ve achieved a real understanding of the material. I will give you a copy of an old exam a week prior to your exam, as a sample of the type and number of questions I have asked in the past. Do not expect the questions on your exam to be just minor variations of questions on the sample exam,

although this may be the case for a small number of questions.

More about grading. The grades that UF instructors may assign are A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, and E. (For grade-point equivalencies of these grades, see this catalog page.) All of these are grades I will consider assigning, except possibly the D-. In particular, I do use the C- grade. Be aware that for many requirements at UF, courses that you’ve taken count only if you get a C or higher; a C- will not meet such requirements.

    I don’t predetermine a grade-curve or percentages for letter grades. I decide the grade scale for each exam separately, according to the philosophy A = excellent, B = good, C = satisfactory, D = unsatisfactory but passing. I’ll determine the grade scale for homework either individually or collectively: I’ll decide which way would be better after I start grading homework. At the end of the semester, I use the cutoffs from the exams and homework (and project, for the MAA 5404 students) to determine the final grade cutoffs on a 1000-point scale. For example, if the cutoff for a B is 80% on the homework, 70% on the first midterm , 76% on the second midterm, and 74% on the final, then to get a B for MAA 4402 you’d need (.10 x 80%) + .25 x(70%+76%) + (.40 x 74%) = 74.1% of the total number of points in the course, i.e. 741/1000.

    In my approach to assigning minus-grades (the same as the approach used by my professors when I was in college), a B-, for example, is not the lower end of the B-range; it is slightly but strictly below the bottom of the B-range, and means that your work falls a little short of “good”. (In the example above, 730 was the cutoff for a B, not a B-. The cutoff for a B- would have been about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way down to the cutoff for a C.) Similarly, a C- means that your work was short of satisfactory, so should not count towards any requirement involving courses completed satisfactorily. Said another way: another professor whose estimation of whether your work was satisfactory is the same as mine, but who regards C- as meaning “the low end of the satisfactory range”, would not assign you a C- for the same work I assign a C- for; he would assign you a D+.

Since I don’t determine the exam-grade cutoffs ahead of time, I can’t tell you in advance exactly how many points you’ll need to get a particular grade for the course. However, I’ll should be able to tell you at any time what grade you’re running up to that point. You can also go to my past classes webpage and look at what my grade-scales have been for various courses in the past. Be aware that until Summer 2009, UF had a bizarre “plus-grades but no minus-grades” system that forced me to decide whether to assign, for example, a C+ or a B to someone who I thought deserved a B-, in which case I rounded up to a B. So the cutoffs that you see in my classes for A, B, and C, up through spring 2009, are approximately where I’d have set the cutoffs for A-, B-, and C- had these grades been assignable at the time, which would have made my class GPA’s a little lower.

Student Honor Code: Students are expected to abide by the the Honor Code:

We, the members of the University of Florida community, pledge to hold ourselves and our peers to the highest standards of honesty and integrity.

On all work submitted for credit by students at the university, the following pledge is either required or implied: “On my honor, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid in doing this assignment.”

Religious Holidays: The following is part of the University of Florida Policy on Religious Holidays . “Students, upon prior notification of their instructors, shall be excused from class or other scheduled academic activity to observe a religious holy day of their faith.”

Accommodations for students with disabilities: Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then provide this documentation to the instructor when requesting accommodation.

Miscellaneous:

  • Unless I say otherwise, you are responsible for knowing any material I cover in class, any subject covered in homework, and all the material in the textbook chapters we are studying.
  • If you miss class the day I return an exam, you’ll have one week to pick up your exam up from my office, after which I may discard your paper (unless you arrange with me a day and time in the near future for you to come and pick it up). The same applies to homework.
  • Cell-phone ringers, audible text-message alerts, etc., should be turned off while you are in class. You may leave your phones in “vibrate” mode so that if UF sends an Emergency Alert, you will receive it. Note that in this case everybody’s phone will be vibrating at the same time, so it will be obvious that something significant is happening. If your phone starts vibrating and nobody else’s does, please ignore it. You do not need to know, in the middle of class, that your friend sent you a text message. (If you ever need me to make an exception to this rule, e.g. if you have a seriously ill family member, let me know before class starts.)
  • Please also avoid other disruptive or distracting noises, such as the tapping of pencils or feet, or the zipping and unzipping of backpacks several minutes before the end of official class period. But I’m still lecturing when the period ends, and you want to give me a hint (or tell me directly) that my time’s up, that’s fine.
  • Do not use your personal computer in class. Ditto for your cellphone, except to receive emergency alerts from UF. In particular, do not read or write text-messages in class. As with the “cell-phones silent” rule, if you ever have a serious need for me to make an exception to this rule, let me know before class starts. Otherwise, if I catch you texting in class (or checking messages) I may ask you to leave Obviously there are some exceptions to this rule, such as if your father is undergoing heart surgery while you’re in class and your mother texts you with an update. But other than in situations like these, students who text in class (or check their messages in class) will be asked to leave.
  • Do not read, do the crossword puzzle, etc., while you are in class. If you’re too bored to pay attention, do homework.

Last update made by D. Groisser Sat Aug 20 18:23:30 EDT 2011