Dear Math 113 students,

Welcome! To get started, here is some information about this course.

Your instructor

Your instructor is part of your "getting through trigonometry" team (along with your friends, your mother, etc.). Help them help you by telling them where you are confused, which step you got lost, what you are feeling, how they can help. Sometimes explaining things is not so easy -- help your instructor explain it to you by asking questions. Asking lots of questions helps them figure out exactly which point is confusing for you.

It helps to mentally put yourself in your instructor's shoes. The first day of class is as intimidating for them as for you: 20 students staring at them, waiting for that moment to pounce on something said or done to consign them to the land of "instructor the students hate" until the end of time. Would you know what to say if you were in this situation?

You can help relax the atmosphere. Tell your instructor about yourself, where you come from, what an amazing party you went to last weekend. When it comes to math, ask them questions. If you help them, they will help you.

Hints for doing Trigonometry

Write each line with clarity and completeness, it makes the mathematics easier.
Figure out why things are done the way they are. There is always a good easy reason. The difficulty is to think about it long enough to realise what the reason is. If you don't know and don't think of the reason then ask. Ask many different people until you get an answer that is satisfying. And then tell everybody else. Once you figure something out spread the word. It's lots easier if everyone works together.
Trigonometry is easy. Most of it is trivial. Unfortunately, society loves to pretend that math is hard and so we have, built into our world, that we say how hard it is LOTS of the time. But it's not true, actually math is pretty easy stuff.
Trigonometry is cool. Why is it cool? What makes something cool? iPods are cool, high heels are cool, once upon a time the band Queen was cool. Why is trigonometry cool? Why is math cool?
An answer given too often is that trigonometry is cool because it has a lot of applications. This is equivalent to saying that trigonometry is cool because it is connected to other things that are cool. This is true, but it is not the only reason (or even the primary reason) that math is cool.

Trigonometry is cool because the thought process used for it are also used in every step of every day life and it gives you an edge over other people. In other words, math is cool because it makes you smart.

Math is cool because the ideas are beautiful and captivating. In other words, mathematics stimulates the artist in your soul, and so doing mathematics is like listening to a CD of your favourite songs in the whole world.
The hardest thing about this course is to be honest with yourself. Really, did you stay up too late last night to be able to process properly what was said in class? Or did you miss that important point because your mind wandered to that awesome party you are going to go to in the evening? Can you really do that problem on the spot if you have to? Did you really study 6 hours last night or was a lot of it taken up with browsing Facebook pictures? What is it, really, that makes you choose the seat in the very back row? The most wonderful thing is that no one else has to know these things that have you a little off kilter, but the most dangerous thing is to lie to yourself and not recognise them at face value. Be honest with yourself!

Big things for improving your grade

Writing mathematics really carefully, clearly and in complete sentences. A very important part of this course is learning how to write mathematics. The main goal in writing is that your reader understands easily what they read. Some things about math writing:

Math writing has a lot of words in it. For example, watch how many words are written in lecture. Go to the math library on floor B2 of Van Vleck and look at a math journal/math book and see for yourself that when mathematicians explain things to each other they use mostly words and not so many equations. Actually the symbols that we use are just abbreviations for the words -- we use them because we are lazy (for example, 2+2=4 is an abbreviation for two plus two is four).
Math writing is in complete sentences. If it is not in complete sentences and not grammatically correct then it is usually impossible to read and make sense out of. Perhaps this is why you are confused in lecture. If your instructor is not writing complete sentences on the board in lecture and you are confused then tell them. We all get lazy sometimes, but you can keep your instructor on track so that you understand what they are doing. Note: = is a verb. A sentence without a verb is not grammatically correct. Note: = is not the only verb.
Your instructors remember very few formulas (but are pretty good at trigonometry -- go figure) and so to make your homework and exams understandable you will need write solutions to the problems that do not assume that the grader remembers every formula in the book.

One of the goals of this course is to teach you how to write mathematics well, and so, yes, points will be taken off if your answer is not written up properly with good grammar and good mathematical writing style.

Simplifying: A very important part of mathematics (and this course) is simplifying your answers. How do you know when you have simplified sufficiently? Simplification is an aesthetic. We like answers that are "pretty"; we don't like ugly answers. You must simplify until the answer cannot be made prettier. Learning to simplify well requires two things: facility with algebraic manipulations and a sense of when an expression looks nice. Everybody has some internal sense of when an expression looks nicer than another but, as with any art form, to get good at it, you must practice and refine this sense. One of the goals of this course is to teach you how to simplify well, and so, yes, points will be taken off if your answers are not simplified.

Using your resources

One of the tricks in life is to use your resources well:

the notes that you take in class,
the lectures,
the book assigned for the course which is available in the bookstore,
the calculator that you bought for college that you won't need for the homeworks and are not allowed to use on the exams for this course,

there are

zillions of trigonometry books available as hand-me-downs from other students, siblings, friends, neighbors, etc.
zillions of trigonometry books in the UW library
zillions of trigonometry books in the used bookstores around town
a second lecture of this class that you are welcome to come to
at least 2 other lectures of Math 113 taught by other instructors
lots of trigonometry information and help available on the web (do a Google search)
MathLab: Free drop-in help from math TAs available in B227 Van Vleck, Monday through Thursday 3:30-8:10 PM. For more information click here.
Math tutorial program: This is to help people through the course who are in danger of receiving a D or a F. At the start of the semester those who have not been in a math course for several years or who are repeating 113 can check with David Camacho in 321 Van Vleck. For more information click here.
GUTS: The Greater University Tutoring Service is a volunteer peer tutoring service located in Union South and Helen C. White. Visit 302A Union South or call 263-5666 for information.
zillions of tutors that will help you even more if you pay them. Click here for more information.

The book

The textbook for the course is "Trigonometry" by J.D. Baley and G. Sarell, McGraw Hill, revised 3rd edition. The syllabus indicates how the sections in the book correspond to what we are covering in class. Your instructor is most able to explain how they think about the material and how they do trigonometry. There is no "right way". If the book happens to do some particular part of the material differently from the way presented in class and you would like an explanation of how the book does it, please do not hesitate to ask.

Exams

The exams are easy. The exams are taken verbatim from the homework. There will never be a problem on the exam that you have not seen before on the homework. The disadvantage is that there is lots of homework. However, effort spent on the homework problems usually translates to good scores on the exams and students that do most of the homework usually feel that they have learned a lot at the end of the course. It is quite a bit of work and requires discipline but the pay off is significant.

Homeworks

Amount of time the homework takes: This is a 2 credit course. The general university guideline is that students should work on a class outside of lecture for approximately 2-3 hours per week per credit hour. This means that for this course you are expected to spend about 4-6 hours outside of class per week and so the homeworks are designed to take 4-6 hours.

How much of the homework is done for you? The homework assignments are roughly 25 problems per week. Each week

approximately 7 problems get done in lectures as examples.
approximately 8 problems get done in office hours (if you show up!).

All together about 15 problems are done for you. This means that the homework assignments are really only about 10 problems long and those other problems are similar to problems that were done in class or during office hours.

Planning your time

It is not recommended to do the average homework assignment for this course in one night. Planning 1-2 hours per day for 2-3 days per week is one possible way for you to manage the time on this course. Your instructor is aware that you also have other classes to study for that will also require 2-3 hours of outside of class study per hour of class time. If you are spending more than 10 focused hours per week on the homework for this class please talk to your instructor about it. If you do not keep them informed they cannot help.

Grades

Grades are normalised 8% for homework, 20% for midterm 1, 20% for midterm 2, 20% for midterm 3, 32% for the final exam.

Any estimate of a grade that is made before the final exams are graded is only an estimate and might be way off the mark. In particular, by experience, there are two groups of students:

those that don't concentrate on the class in the first month, fail the first exam, realise that they are in trouble, start working and do well on the subsequent exams;
those that work hard in class in the first month and do well on the first midterm and then get cocky and start slacking and fail the second exam.

Not everybody lies in one of these two groups, but these two groups are larger than you might think.

Midterm letter grades should be taken with a grain of salt. Much more important towards getting a good grade is to keep your point total high.

Last updated: 7 January, 2009