You learn by struggling with problems. However, if you get too stuck or don't know how to begin, help is available. Talk to your classmates (however; see the notes below about academic honesty regarding discussing assignment problems with others). Go to office hours; the instructor and TA are there to help you! You also learn by making mistakes and getting feedback about them. Just make sure that you use the feedback to improve your understanding.
Groups of students can learn a lot by explaining their solutions to the suggested exercises from the textbook to one another and critiquing the solutions of others. After all, learning how to explain solutions clearly is one of the learning objectives of this course. Seeing where other students' solutions are unclear to you helps you make your own explanations clearer. Be aware that a problem may have many different correct solutions; just because someone's solution is different from yours doesn't necessarily mean that one of them is wrong.
It takes time to build new skills, so it helps if you work on exercises regularly: don't leave all the work to the days right before a test.
Sometimes students ask for more exercises with worked-out solutions. (The textbook has some, but maybe not enough.) There is a whole shelf of textbooks that cover the material of this course in the library (some are recommended below), and many have more examples or exercises with solutions.
| Weekly homework assignments | 15% |
| Quiz | 5% |
| Test 1 | 20% |
| Test 2 | 20% |
| Final exam | 40% |
Although you may discuss the general approach to solving a problem on a homework assignment with other people, you should not discuss the solution in detail. You must not take any written notes away from such a discussion. Also, you must list on the cover page of your solutions any people with whom you have discussed the problems. The solutions you hand in should be your own work. While writing them, you may look at the course textbook and your own lecture notes but no other outside sources.
| First class | Thursday, September 7 |
| Quiz | Friday, September 22 |
| Reading Week (no classes) | October 9-13 |
| Test 1 in CLH H | Friday, October 20 |
| Drop deadline | Wednesday, November 8 |
| Test 2 in LSB 103 | Friday, November 17 |
| Last class | Friday, December 1 |
| Review session in CLH J | Friday, December 15 |
| Exam period | December 7 to 20 |
The following list gives other useful references.
| Week | Section | Suggested Exercises |
| September 4 | 0.1-0.4 | 0.1-0.6, 0.10-0.13 and review exercises |
| September 11 | 1.1 | 1.1-1.6 (a few parts of each), 1.27, 1.31-1.34, 1.48 |
| September 18 | 1.2 | 1.7-1.11 (a few parts of each), 1.13-1.16, 1.38, 1.42, 1.44 |
| September 25 | 1.3 | 1.12, 1.17-1.23, 1.28(b), 1.36, 1.39, 1.40 |
| October 2 | 1.4 and pages 194-197 | 1.29, 1.30, 1.46, 1.47, 1.49, 1.54, 1.55(a-b), 1.58, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.10, 4.12, 4.13, 4.16, 4.21 |
| October 16, 23 | 3.1, 3.2 | 3.1(b), 3.2(a,e), 3.5, 3.7, 3.8(a), 3.15, 3.16(a-d), 3.22; 3.10, 3.12, 3.13 |
| October 30 | 3.3, 4.2 | 4.5-4.8 |
| November 6 | 5.1 (pages 216-220) | 5.10, 5.11, 5.13 |
| November 13 | 5.3 | 5.4-5.7, 5.9, 5.22, 5.23, 5.28-5.30 |
| November 20 | 2.1 | 2.1, 2.3, 2.4, 2.6, 2.8, 2.9, 2.15, 2.16, 2.17, 2.19, 2.25, 2.26 |
| November 27 | 2.2, 2.3 | 2.5, 2.7, 2.10; 2.2, 2.13, 2.30, 2.31, 2.32, 2.35 |
| December 4 | pages 198-200 | 4.4, 4.5, 4.11, 4.14, 4.31 |
Updated December 7, 2023