I’m trying out a few atypical teaching techniques for this class due to the pandemic, and so I need to reserve the right to change things in this syllabus in case things go horribly awry. But assuredly, you’ll find any changes that I decide we have to make to be agreeable.
The purpose of this class is to prepare you to learn calculus. Just like learning math in high school required you to be adept at arithmetic, it’s much easier to understand calculus if you are fluent in the mathematical language of functions, coordinate geometry, trigonometry, and modelling. In this class we’ll work towards developing that fluency.
In particular, after this course is complete you will be familiar with a library of common transcendental functions, including exponential functions, logarithms, and trigonometric functions. You will be skillful in algebraically manipulating these functions, and you will understand what those manipulations mean in terms of the geometry of the graphs of those functions. You will have developed fluency in trigonometry, and practiced the skill of using mathematics to model concrete situations. You will be able to write about mathematics, having a better understanding of the grammar and syntax of mathematical notation, and having developed skills in technical writing.
The course starts on July 27. I’ll curate a list of readings, videos, and other resources to guide you through learning the course material. Each week there will be a page of homework posted that you should write up responses to and upload to Gradescope before 8am the following Monday:
I’ll be basing some of each week’s lecture sessions on what I read in your previous week’s write-ups. All the materials and links for the course will be posted at:
In discussion you will literally learn to develop your fluency in the topics of this class by learning to write about them.
| Mike Pierce |
Jonathan Alcaraz |
| Lecture Tues & Thurs, 8–10am
| Discussion Tues & Thurs, 1–2:20pm
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| Mike’s Office Hours by Appointment
| Jonathan’s Office Hours
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| Final Exam Saturday September 12, 1–3pm
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If you cannot take the final at this data/time due to religious reasons, medical reasons, or a sudden emergency, just let me know before the scheduled final time and we’ll figure something out.
It’s an unfortunate thing that I, as your instructor, don’t get to simply teach you. As an employee of UC Riverside I’m also supposed to judge you and assign you a letter-grade for the university. But grades aren’t conducive to learning (see here and here), and it’d be a pain to fairly grade you during the pandemic anyways. So instead, throughout this course I’ll be providing you with qualitative feedback to your homework instead of letter grades or numerical scores, and you’ll be actively reflecting on your own learning and understanding. The buzzword to Google is “ungrading” in case you’d like to learn more about what I’m thinking. Then at the end of the term, I’ll glance over your reflections and we’ll have a conversation about what letter-grade I should submit to UCR for you. Note that since the purpose of this course is to prepare you to learn calculus, so long as I’m confident you’ll succeed taking a calculus class next term, you will pass this class.
If at any point during the term you are curious or concerned whether or not I think you’re making sufficient progress in this course, please talk to me. Since I’m not ranking you with scores to communicate your progress, it’s more important that maintain communication with me than if this were a more typical course.
And we’ll have a final for the course. I’ll read it, but the final will not be graded either. I figure since the pandemic will persist into the school year it’d be good practice for you to take a final exam proctored via Zoom like you’ll have to in future classes; remember the purpose here is to prepare you to take calculus.
All the homework for the course will be uploaded to Gradescope. You can upload either images or PDFs. I imagine the most convenient workflow for you would be to write-up your homework on paper and upload photos of that. But some of the homework has writing components you may prefer to type. You could submit a mix of images and PDFs. Whatever works best for you. A couple technical requests about uploading photos to Gradescope:
Most every online class meeting everywhere is being conducted using Zoom. I recommend using their desktop app or phone app over using Zoom in your web browser.
If you’re in a Zoom meeting with more than just a couple people, like a full lecture or discussion section for example, you should keep your microphone muted unless you are speaking to reduce the amount of background noise in the meetings. Otherwise in meetings of just a few people with a more personal vibe, you should have you microphone and webcam on to cohere to that vibe. For my class there’s no requirement that you have your webcam on, although I would appreciate it a lot; teaching becomes an depressing experience it I can’t see the class. But, video or not, it would be incredibly helpful if you’d upload a profile pic to Zoom. It doesn’t even have to be a pic of you, but just some photo that I can identify as you.
Any Zoom meetings I host, I have to record for liability purposes.
Did you know that there is a nice way to type math notation? This is based on the document typesetting system LaTeX. To say it simply, LaTeX is a markup language, kinda like a programming language, that makes it super easy to type mathematics. It is the standard tool professional mathematicians and other scientists use to draft papers and notes. Then Overleaf is a website that allows teams to collaborate on documents written with LaTeX, kinda like how Google Docs works with typical documents. Getting started, I’d advise you to use Overleaf. To provide some guidance on how to learn the LaTeX language: the Overleaf website has some nice LaTeX documentation to introduce you to the language. The LaTeX Wikibook is more robust, and the resource I still often reference. Then the website Detexify is invaluable, since it allows you to hand-draw a mathematical symbol to find out the LaTeX command to create that symbol.
A related bit of software that might interest you is TeX for Gmail. This is a chrome browser extension that allows you to type mathematics in an email using LaTeX’s syntax.
If you anticipate or experience any barriers to learning in this course, please feel welcome to discuss your concerns with me. I’ll do what I can to adapt the class, and adapt my style and demeanor as your teacher, to fit your needs. Due to the sudden shift to remote teaching, it should be pointed out that this includes the technical accessibility of the course too. Remember too that there’s this Google Form to contact me anonymously if you’d ever like to. But if you don’t feel comfortable coming to me to talk to me there are a plethora of resources and communities available on the UCR campus that I urge you to reach out to. Here is a curated list of those resources and communities.
studentwellness.ucr.edu/student-success-resources
In particular, if you have a disability, or think you may have a disability, you may want to contact the Student Disabilities Resource Center to begin a conversation or request an official accommodation from the university.
An assessment is a tool to help me gauge what you know and what you’ve learned, and help me teach you better. Assignments are tasks designed to help you develop and learn. Your homework will serve as both the assessments and assignments in this course. Please don’t do anything to undermine the accuracy of an assessment, or the effectiveness of an assignment, or else it’s UCR’s policy that I inform the administration to get involved. I don’t like the administration. To read over UCR’s academic integrity policies, see:
conduct.ucr.edu/policies/academic-integrity-policies-and-procedures
One important thing to do though specifically to learning math from class lecture is to orient yourself before and after the lecture begins. So when you arrive to class, before the lecturer starts talking, take a few minutes to remind yourself what you learned last time in lecture and why it was important. And after a lecture is over, take a few minutes to think about what the purpose of the lecture was. (and if you’re not sure, then the lecturer did a poor job and you should ask them directly what the purpose was before leaving) Sometimes it helps to do this exercise explicitly in writing
Also worth pointing out, the answer is not necessarily the important part of your write-up. When we, your instructors, ask you to calculate something on a quiz/exam/etc, that’s really just a prompt for you to demonstrate your understanding through that calculation. A correct answer alone is not enough to demonstrate understanding, But an “unsimplified” answer will leave us doubting that you understand some basics of arithmetic.