FAQ
This page collects together some questions that come up on a regular basis. You need to read it at the start of the semester, and it's not a bad idea to re-read it once we're 3 or 4 weeks into the semester and you've established a rhythm for the class.
Logistical Questions
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My preference is for you to call me by my first name: Andy. My feeling is that in college you're learning how to work in the world of adults, and often (but not always) in that world you'll address people by their first name even if they are a few years older than you.
Disclaimer: many professors do NOT want you to address them by their first name. In general, if you're not sure how to address your professor, you can use ``Professor " without creating any offense.
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If you've taken high school algebra, you should have the right background to make approaching this material possible. You do not need to be an algebra expert in order to succeed in Calculus I. For example, you might not remember how exponent rules work, or what a logarithm is. This will not prevent you from doing well in this course, but you will need to sharpen those skills during the semester..
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Short answer: yes. Longer answer: my experience in teaching many sections calculus is that students who take Calculus I after being placed in Calculus II would often be happier if they had chosen to take Math 116 instead or Math 115. Students who are repeating this material can find it harder to stay engaged and excited about the content, and sometimes feel like they lost a semester of potential progress.
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Some students like to have the text on hand so they have a resource to lean on when they are trying to digest content from the lectures. I can't stress how valuable it can be to have another mathematical presentation of content to make sense of things, and this is another asset the book has going for it. Finally, I will frequently draw optional homework problems directly from the text. The only downside to owning the text is the cost, and since we're using a textbook for which used copies are readily available, I think the pros soundly outweigh the cons. Go buy the book.
In case you hate Stewart, there's an additional text that I've suggested which is also an excellent resource.
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I'm very happy to meet outside of office hours, but it will take a little work to coordinate a time that is amenable to both of our schedules. Contact me via email and let me know the dates and times that work well for your schedule. You optimize your chances of getting to chat with me outside office hours if you contact me two or three days before the day you want to meet.
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The syllabus gives you the breakdown I use for each component of the course, together with information about any grades that might get dropped. The challenge in computing your current course average is that you'll have lots of data: we'll likely complete about 10 homework sets, 10 quizzes, 3 midterms and a final, plus there's a participation component. If you want to know how you're doing in the course, I advise you to create a spreadsheet with those grades. Your current scores in each of the four components of the course (homework, quizzes, etc.) can then be calculated pretty easily. Of course I'm also happy to do this for you if you want to set up a meeting.
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Unless you hear from me otherwise: no. Sometimes I'll try to hold office hours on a holiday, but this depends on many factors; if I am able to hold an office hour on such a day, you'll hear from me by email.
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If the College is choosing to pretend that Xday is instead Yday, then I'll follow suit and have my schedule structured according to my "usual" Yday schedule.
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Get in touch with one of your classmates to get a copy of the notes. After you've reviewed the notes and read through the relevant section of the book, feel free to ask me questions about anything that doesn't make sense. If you don't know anyone in the class that you can get notes from, reach out to me and I can help coordinate an exchange.
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Reasonably intense. Chances are good that we'll cover content at a faster pace than one would in, say, a high school class. Though I work to break the material into digestible chunks, students will want to budget a healthy amount of time each week for chewing on the material. For many students, this course is the first math class where they haven't immediately "gotten it" on the first attempt. This is ok! Not only does it indicate that the material you're working on is increasing in sophistication and nuance, but it takes many students a while to adjust to learning in a college environment. I'm here as a resource as you work to master this new (and exciting!) material.
Questions about homework
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Our problem sets are handled through WebWork, which is an online homework system. The benefits of the system include immediate feedback about whether an answer you've submitted is right, and most problems are set up so that you have multiple chances to submit a solution. The downsides of the system include immediate feedback about whether an answer you've submitted is wrong, and most problems are set up so that you have multiple chances to submit a solution.
Students enrolled in the class are given an account on our WebWork site. Your username/password credentials at the start of the semester are determined by your Wellesley id. For instance, if your name is Wendy Wellesley and you've been given the email address wwelles5@wellesley.edu, then you'll use wwelles5 for both your username and password when you first login to WebWork. You're given the chance to reset your password once you're logged in; this is a smart move to prevent other people from screwing with your account.
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In order to access our WebWork site, you need to be accessing the site from the campus' network. If you're off campus, you can do this by using VPN. If you're on campus, make sure you're on the "WellesleySecure" network instead of "eduRoam."
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If you've computed some problem by hand a few times and consistently get the same answer, you might consider checking on whether you performed the calculation correctly. If you work cleanly on homework problems, writing only one computational step per line, you'll have an easier time ``debugging" your answer. You can also choose to use a calculator or computer algebra system to check that your computation has been performed correctly. If you find that your computation is off, you should certainly spend the time figuring out where you made a mistake instead of simply typing the answer from your calculator into WebWork.
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In my experience, the lag time between when a student finishes a homework problem and when she receives hand-written feedback on that problem is not less than one week. During that time the student has started working on a new problem set and is also trying to learn new material from the class that hasn't yet been assigned on a problem set. Taken together, these circumstances mean that students rarely take the time to acknowledge that a specific mistake has been made, much less to carefully rework missed problems. The fact that WebWork gives instant feedback typically encourages students to rework missed problems immediately (and, often, repeatedly) until a problem has been resolved.
Furthermore, in the time that graders have to sort through a weekly problem set, the best feedback one can hope for is an indication of one place where a computation has gone astray. Typically, graders are able to do even less than this, instead only determining whether the provided solution matches the answer from the key; though graders typically do this quite well, there are occasional ``false positives" and ``false negatives" where the grader marks an incorrect answer as correct, or a correct answer as incorrect. Assuming a problem has been programmed into WebWork correctly, WebWork is very good at knowing whether your submitted answer really is equivalent to the desired solution. In this sense, it provides qualitatively similar feedback to that of a human grader.
Finally: the process of looking through an incorrect solution you've written to find mistake(s) is extremely useful. Homework assignments through WebWork are the only method I've found in the last fifteen years that consistently encourages students to do this. It also gives you some "debugging" experience that can be useful if you go on to do anything mildly technical or coding-esque.
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Since you typically won't be allowed to use calculators (or other technological tools) when completing quizzes and tests, it's best to complete your homework without relying heavily on these tools. To do otherwise would be a disservice to your preparation for these other assessment tools. On the other hand, using these kinds of tools to double-check your computations can be a great idea, because then you can determine whether you need to brush up on some of the computational techniques we'll use in the course.
Remember that in general I don't require you to complete arithmetic operations or "simplify" things in some particular way; an answer like $6\cdot 2 + 5$ is just as valid as (and, in some cases, easier to understand than) the equivalent $17$.
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Working collaboratively on a problem set has huge pedagogical benefits for everyone involved; you're highly encouraged to do this. Issues of academic integrity come into play only when one student is siphoning off answers from other students without meaningfully engaging in the process.
If there is true collaboration between students on a problem, there's little risk of cheating. If, instead, one student asks another student how to solve a certain problem, there is the potential for a violation of academic integrity. To avoid this, follow this guideline. If you're a student asking another student how to solve a problem, have a discussion with that student so that you learn how the problem works. Take notes if you like. Once you feel you understand what's happening, take a 20 minute break and then return to the problem without the use of your notes. If you can complete the problem from start to finish on your own, then you truly understand the problem and can write up your solution formally. If you find that you have to reference your notes from the discussion with your helper, carry through to the end and make yourself comfortable with the problem. Take another 20 minute break and return to the problem, again without notes. If you can complete the problem without referring to your notes, formally write it up and submit it. Otherwise, repeat the process above until you can work the problem entirely on your own.
The process above is intended for those students who genuinely do not know how to approach a problem and are guided from start to finish by a helper (classmate or professor). Of course if you worked on a problem and got almost everything right, but found a small computational error with the help of a friend, you don't have to go through the whole process again. For situations between these two extremes, err on the side of caution when it comes to exercising your ability to complete problems independently after coaching from someone else.
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If you're working to understand a homework problem, you should NOT be looking through materials from outside our course. I'm sure those sources might have a lot to say about the problems at hand (and you might even be able to find a fully composed solution!), but this isn't a good way to learn material.
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No.
Questions about quizzes and/or tests
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In general, the material covered on quizzes will be the content covered in the homework you've submitted the preceding Saturday. For those weeks when there was not a homework assignment due the preceding Saturday, the quiz will instead be on the topics covered during class in the previous week.
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Absolutely not. I consider this a serious breach of academic integrity. If I find out that a student has viewed copies of old tests, or has otherwise solicited information about tests from former students, I will bring up a formal honor code case.
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No. See above.
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(tl;dr) Not until you've been told it's clear to do so.
The easiest way to make sure everyone is on a level playing field is for students to wait to talk about the quiz/test until they've heard from me that everyone has taken the quiz/test. If you must talk about the quiz/test with someone before you've been told everyone has taken an exam, only speak about the quiz/test with people that you know have taken the quiz/test already. Do no speak about the quiz/test in the company of others who have no taken the quiz/test. It's obvious that you shouldn't divulge specific information (like particular questions), but you also shouldn't give qualitative information (you felt the quiz/test was ``easy" or ``hard" or ``fair", etc.) or even logistical information (the test was 12 pages long, or printed on white copy paper, or stapled in the top left corner). In short: don't say anything about a quiz/test to a person who has not taken the quiz/test until after you've been told by the professor that it's ok.
It would impossible for me to administer exams and quizzes in this way at an institution that didn't have a robust honor code. It is a privilege --- for you and for me --- that we're at a school where integrity counts. It is your responsibility to ensure that you live up to this standard so that everyone gets the chance to take quizzes and exams under the same conditions, and therefore so that these instruments can reflect each individuals understanding of the course material.
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(tl;dr) No.
Experience has shown me that practice tests are not effective in getting students to prepare for exams, and they typically do more to hurt than facilitate student learning. Students are better served reviewing the relevant notes, creating their own study sheet, determining their strengths and weaknesses, and then allotting study time accordingly. Much like completing homeworks, this kind of preparation requires an investment of time and energy. Of course, that investment of time and energy doesn't have to be done independently! Collaborating on test preparation with peers or the instructor has the same pedagogical benefits as collaboration on psets, and is highly encouraged.
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Exams will typically consist of problems that ask you either to perform calculations related to (and often quite similar to) problems from homework assignments or to draw conclusions based on the theory we've discussed in class. For the former, your best preparation is to productively engage with the weekly homework sets; when the exam draws closer, if you have a basic overview of the kinds of problems we've covered for the relevant class periods, you can then determine which kinds of problems you're comfortable with and which kinds of problems you need to work to understand better. There are lots of computational problems in your text (and on optional problem sets) that you can work on to sharpen these skills. As for the problems which ask you to draw conclusions based on the theory we've discussed in class, your best bet is to have a strong grasp of the narrative arc of the course (what are our motivating questions? what are the theorems we've discussed that help resolve those questions? how have these theorems led us to the computational tools we've developed?).
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Homework problems and quizzes are worked in an environment that's totally different from tests: when working on homework, a student has unlimited access to the text or their notes, can ask questions of classmates or the professor, can work on a problem for several days, is told upon completion whether an answer is correct or not, and has the opportunity to rework a problem if a submitted answer is deemed incorrect. Quizzes have somewhat less freedom, but also an opportunity for redemption that makes strong performance easier to prepare for. There are huge pedagogical benefits to giving students an ``open" environment like this to work through homework and quiz problems, but a student can't assume that completing the homework by the due date is equivalent to a solid understanding of the course material. In preparing for exams, work towards becoming capable at completing problems in the closed-book, non-collaborative, technology-free, timed environment you'll find on a test.
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Why does anyone do anything?