Spring 2008: Lectures MWF 9. Discussion sections TR 9. Room: MS 5137.
Instructor:
Herbert B. Enderton
(hbe@math.ucla.edu)
Office MS 7905. Office hours Mon. & Wed. 2:00-3:30.
Also I monitor our
"virtual office hours"
for this class.
Teaching Assistant:
Ethan S. Brown
(ethan@math.ucla.edu)
Office MS 2361. Office hours Tues. & Thurs. 10-11.
"LINEAR ALGEBRA"
This course studies vector spaces (as abstract spaces, characterized
axiomatically), linear transformations and their representing matrices,
eigenvectors and the diagonalization problem, and inner product spaces
and orthogonality. This course is also intended as an introduction to
a more rigorous approach to studying mathematics.
See also the
Mathematics Department's description
of this course, and their
course outline.
Prerequisites: Mathematics 33A, or equivalent. You will need to know, for example, about matrix operations (addition, multiplication, inverse) and their properties, elementary row operations, reduced row echelon form, determinants, and applications to systems of linear equations. (Some of this material is in Chapters 3 and 4 of our textbook, in slightly different form.)
Textbook: Friedberg, Insel, and Spence, Linear Algebra, fourth edition (Custom UCLA Edition). The book is available in the ASUCLA bookstore now. There are some errata.
Homework: Yes! Although the homework problem sets account for only a small part of the course grade, you should definitely do them, in order to master the material. Besides, every little bit helps, especially if the tests do not all go well. Late homework will normally not be graded.
Tests: There will be a first midterm exam on Wednesday, April 23, and a second midterm on Wednesday, May 21. The final exam is on Tuesday, June 10, 11:30-2:30 (exam code 2).
Grading: The final exam constitutes a large part of the grade. The two midterms together constitute another large part. The homework accounts for a small part. ("Large" means 40-50%. "Small" means no more than 10%.) To get an Incomplete grade, you must be doing passing work when struck by unforeseen external disaster.
Enrollment: If this course fills up, I suggest getting on the waiting list, if possible. And if worse comes to worst, note that we offer Math. 115A every quarter.
Website: http://www.math.ucla.edu/~hbe/115a.1.08s