Math 33B Winter 2008 Syllabus

Instructor: Alex Boisvert
Textbook: J. Polking, "Differential Equations", 2nd edition.
Office: MS 6322
Office Hours: Monday 9:30-10:30
Wednesday 10:30-11:30
Friday 9:30-10:30
Class home page: http://www.math.ucla.edu/~boisvert/33b.1.08w/ or snipurl.com/1vd8n

Homework:

Homework will be assigned in class on Monday and will be due in class the following Monday. Homework must be written neatly and stapled in the upper left-hand corner. Late homework is never accepted under any circumstances. Your lowest homework score will be dropped; however, I encourage you to turn in all the homework in case for some reason you have to miss a homework later.

Exams:

There will be two midterms: a first on February 1st and a second on February 29th. The final exam will be given on March 21st. There are no make-up exams. You must take the final to pass the class. You must bring your student ID to the final exam.

Grading:

The homework is graded as follows: the reader will select five problems at random to grade, for 10 points each. The remaining 50 points is for completeness. If you have attempted all of the problems (not just writing down the problem number, for instance) you get 50 points, otherwise you get 0. As mentioned above, the lowest homework score is dropped.
There are two grading schema for this class: Note: Even if you get 100% on the first midterm, you are better off taking the second midterm anyway, because the final will probably be harder than the second midterm (i.e. there is no way to beat the system).

The grade for the final exam and the final grade in the class are non-negotiable.

We will be using MyUCLA (http://my.ucla.edu) for grading. All of your grades will be visible there. I recommend you keep your old homeworks and check MyUCLA periodically to make sure there has not been an error.

Course Outline

This outline is preliminary and is subject to change.


Lecture
Sections
Topics
1/7
2.1
Examples, Direction Fields
1/9
2.1
Examples, Direction Fields
1/11
2.2
Separable equations
1/14
2.4
Linear Equations, x' (t) = a (t) x (t) + f (t)
1/16
2.5
Mixing Problems
1/18
2.6
Exact Differential Equations
1/23
2.6
Exact Differential Equations
1/25
2.7
Existence and Uniqueness
1/28
2.9
Autonomous Equations and Stability
1/30
4.1
Existence and Uniqueness, Linear Dependence, The Wronskian
2/1
2.1,2.2,
2.4-2.7
Midterm 1
2/4
4.1
Existence and Uniqueness, Linear Dependence, The Wronskian
2/6
4.3
Second Order Constant Coefficient Equations
2/8
4.3
Second Order Constant Coefficient Equations
2/11
4.4
Harmonic Motion -- Unforced
2/13
4.5
Undetermined Coefficients
2/15
4.6
Variation of Parameters
2/18
9.1
Linear Systems with Constant Coefficients
2/20
9.2
2 x 2 systems
2/22
9.2
2 x 2 systems
2/25
9.2
2 x 2 systems
2/27
9.3
Phase Plane Portraits
2/29
2.9, 4.1, 4.3,
4.4-4.6, 9.1
Midterm 2
3/3
9.4
The Trace-Determinant Plane
3/5
9.5
Higher-Dimensional Systems
3/7
9.5
Higher-Dimensional Systems
3/10
9.6
The Exponential of a Matrix
3/12
9.6
The Exponential of a Matrix
3/14
9.6
Catch-up / Review