Modified Syllabus for Math 481

The provisions on this page are effective from March 23 until further notice. The plan assumes that the emergency will last the entire rest of the semester, including the final exam.

At all times, your first priority should be your own safety and security. This course is secondary. On a lighter note, if you have some time on your hands then calculating with tensors is a good way to fill it.

All plans are subject to change, and some of the plans are admittedly a bit vague. Expect further updates to this website.

If the conditions in your location prevent you from participating in any of the activities described here, please let the instructor know.

• In-person lectures are cancelled.
• The instructor will record video lectures and make links available. These will be “asynchronous” lectures, so you are not required to watch them at a particular time.

• In-person office hours are cancelled.
• During the scheduled MWF 2:00pm hour, we will attempt to hold a meeting (most likely using Zoom) for discussion of the material, instead of office hours.

• Homework will be turned in via a file-sharing service (most likely Box). This will require you to digitize your homework. We will provide guidance on how to do this in a reasonable way.
• All of the remaining homework assignments are available, and you can begin work on them at any time.
• Homework due dates may be modified, but only in the direction of giving students more time to do the homework.

• The second midterm exam and the final exam will be take-home exams. At the appropriate time, the problems will be posted on this website, and you will need to write out your solutions and upload them using the same method as the homework.
• The exam will be due at by a certain time, but it will not strictly speaking be timed. For example, the exam may be due 24 hours after it is posted, even though the exam is only intended to take an hour to complete.

The basic grading scheme is unchanged. However, when assigning final letter grades, serious consideration will be given to the severely disrupted learning conditions that everyone is dealing with.

We will continue to use Piazza for questions and answers. I anticipate that there will be more activity there in the coming weeks. If you have not used Piazza yet, please sign up here. Note that you can use any email to register for Piazza and can post questions and answers anonymously if you prefer.