Course Information - MATH 2451 - FALL

2005

• Contact: V. Ramakrishna, EC 3.906

• Classroom and Hours : Tuesdays and Thursdays 7-8.15
pm, CB 1.120.
• Campus Extension: 6873; email: vish@utdallas.edu
• Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 6-7 pm
and/or by Appointment. Students are welcome to
use other times to meet me. But to avoid potential
conflicts they should i) send me an email exactly a day
in advance; ii) if wishing to meet me on Mondays leave
voicemail (not email) for me on the Sunday before at my
campus extension (6873). Both the email and voicemail
message must tell me how to get a hold of them in case I
am unable to make the meeting.
• Teaching Assistant(s) in Charge of the Problem Session:
Expected to be known soon. The TA will give you her/his
coordinates and office hours in the first problem session.
• PROBLEM SESSION: Every student should be
registered in one of the two problems session held
on either Tuesdays (8.30pm - 10.20pm) or ii) Thursdays
(8.30pm - 10.20pm) in CB 1.120 - NO EXCEPTIONS.
Please note the course number for the problem sessions is
Math 2051. The problem sessions are essential
for the course. In particular all quizzes will be
conducted only during the last half-hour of the
problem session.
• Recommended Use of the Problem Session:
Due to the vast amount of material that I have to cover,
I will not be able to dwell too much on illustrative
numerical calculations. You should use the problem ses-
sions to work out such problems. I will periodically give
HWs, which will not be graded, and which will contain
such routine drill problems. You should try and solve
them yourselves, with assistance from the TA if need be
and from me outside of regular class hours.
• Grading Policy:

• Quizzes: 20 percent
• 3 Midterms: 20 percent each. Will be held September
29th (Thursday), October 27th (Thursday), Novem-
ber 17th (Thursday).
• Final: 20 percent. Will be held on November 29th
(Tuesday), 7pm.

• Please Note Carefully:

1. Your schedule says that the maximum time allowed

for an examination is 2 hours and 45 minutes. How-
 ever, this does not mean that the final has to last
that long. All examinations for this course will last
at most 90 minutes.
2. Quizzes last 30 minutes.
• Quizzes There will be a total of 10 quizzes. If time
permits (and there is a sizeable demand), I will conduct
a eleventh quiz as a makeup quiz. The 10 quizzes will be
held on the following dates (during the last half-hour of
the problem session): • Dates for Quizzes:
• Tuesday Session: August 23rd, 30th; September 6th,
13th, 20th; October 4th, 11th, 18th; November 1st,
8th.
• Thursday Session: August 25th; September 1st, 8th,
15th, 22nd; OOctober 6th, 13th 20th; November 3rd,
10th.
Math 2451 - Grading Scheme
• The grading is going to be cumulative as explained in
class. In particular, there will be no “grading on the
curve”.

• ≥ 95% (A+); 87.5 - 95 (A); 82.5 - 87.5 (A-)

• 75- 82.5 (B+); 70-75 (B); 65- 70 (B-)
• 60-65 (C+); 55-60 (C); 50-55(C-)
 • 45-50 (D+); 40-45 (D); 35-40 (D-)
• < 35% - F; Hopefully, nobody will plumb this depth.

• Textbook is Vector Calculus by J. Marsden and A.

Tromba. Students are encouraged to actively use other
books for broadening their horizons!! I will periodically
refer you to other texts on related material.
• Notes:
• I will quite frequently give you additional notes. These
notes are meant to complement the text, and hence
must be read. In the event that the notes contain
material that you will not be tested on, you will be
so informed. Typically, the notes will relate the ma-
terial of this course to other courses that are of in-
terest (such as Differential Equations, Linear Alge-
bra, Physics/Engineering Courses). Occasionally
the notes will supersede the text, in the
sense that they may be a shortcut to what
is leisurely covered in the text.
• Links for lecture notes: These notes will be avail-
able on the web at the Mcdermott Library Reserves
page. Specifically i) go to UTD’s home page; ii) click
on the library link; iii) go to the “Reserves” link (it
appears under “Services”); iv) Input my name (“Ra-
makrishna”) in the box for “Instructor” by scrolling
 down adequately; v) This will lead you to the link
(called “E-items”) for the notes (currently there are
15 lecture notes in pdf version).

• Deviation from Order in Textbook: Please be

forewarned that there will be deviations from the logical
order presented in the textbook. Therefore, if you
miss classes, the onus is on you to check with
me regarding which sections or notes were cov-
ered. I will not track you down to keep you up
to date.

• More on Grades and the Like:

• Each quiz will be worth 12 points. The best 10 of the

11 will count towards your quiz grade. The total will
then be divided by 6 to account for the 20 percent
that the quizzes constitute in the final grade for the
course.
• It is to be understood that merely writing the answer
down will get no credit. The emphasis will be on
displaying the method. At all times, in your answer,
the flow of logic and reasoning must be very clear.
In other words, the burden is on you to display on
paper your thinking and not on the grader to decipher
what you may have meant. In particular, this entails
 writing in complete sentences or using the permitted
logical connectives.
• Calculators: None will be allowed.
• Type of problems to be expected: Whilst
there will be the odd few drill problems (i.e., the ones
involving routine insertion of numerical values into
some formula), the bulk of the questions will test your
conceptual understanding of the subject. In particular
this means you may be asked to show the validity of
some statement in general. Take heart, any proofs at
all will not be very complicated! The principal reason
behind the emphasis on the conceptual instead of the
mechanical types of questions is that nowadays com-
puters are available which can do routine calculations.
On the other hand to get a computer to do these cal-
culations for you, you need to know what to input to
the computer (or even how to modify a certain ex-
tant code to solve the specific problem you run across
in your job). This means you have to have a clear
understanding of the material involved.
• Cheating will not be tolerated. Students are expected
to inform the lecturer of any suspected violations of
the honor code.
• Makeups: In general, there will be no make up ex-
ams or quizzes. To makeup for a missed test or exam
the following steps should be taken a) Inform me in
advance that you will be missing a test. My permis-
sion to let you do this depends on the seriousness of
the reason for your missing the test - this has to be
accompanied by serious documentation; and ii) Make
arrangements for taking a makeup test. The makeup
has to be usually within a week of the actual test that
you missed. Failure to complete either of these steps
means a zero will be assigned to you for that test.
 • CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF LECTURES
(subject to change)
Please pay attention to deviation in order from the
textbook.

1. Inner products in Rn (Section 1.4); Orthogonal Pro-

jection (Sec 1.2, Pg 31 - 32 generalized to higher di-
mensions).
2. Graphs and level sets (notes expanding substantially
on Sec 2.1)
3. Basic topology of Rn (Sec 2.2, supplemented by notes)
4. Linear and Affine Maps (Notes)
5. Differentiability (starting with the general setting),
Tangent planes, Linear approximations (Sec 2.3, sup-
plemented by notes
6. Chain Rule (notes)
7. Brief look at paths (Sec 2.4)
8. Gradients, Lie derivatives, Applications to solving ODEs,
Scalar potentials for gradient vector fields, Hamilto-
nian vector fields, the method of suucessive integra-
tion (notes expanding substantially on Sec 2.6)
 9. The Implicit function theorem(Sec 3.5)
10. Extrema of functions, Lagrange Multipliers (Sec 3.3 -
3.4)
11. Differential Forms 1: basic manipulation, wedge prod-
uct, exterior derivative, div, grad, curl, dot and cross
products as special cases, Poincare’s lemma, vector
field identities on Pg 306 derived via differential forms
(notes - see also Sec 8.6)
12. Differential Forms 2; Frobenius’s theorem, applica-
tions to the method of first integrals (notes)
13. Differential Forms 3: Integration of differential forms,
line and surface integrals, all change of variable formu-
lae (See Ch 6) as special cases of one method, Stokes’
theorem, Greens theorem etc.,as special cases, con-
nection to the classical approach (notes - see Ch 7,
8)
14. Brief look at Fubini’s theorem and the error integral
(Section 5.4, notes)
15. Complex numbers, quaternions, octonions, complex
analysis derived from vector calculus plus a little al-
gebra (notes).
 • Aims of the Course: The aim of the course is
to emphasize those aspects of the theory of functions
of several real variables which are extremely important
in physics, engineering (electrical and mechanical), eco-
nomics and of course, mathematics itself. The empha-
sis will be on the qualitative, quantitative and occassion-
ally the philosophical aspects of those parts of the course
which are ubiquitious in these applications. As an ex-
ample I will dwell on the implict function theorem from
several points of view. Likewise when we get to vector
fields I will relate it to differential equations - this con-
nection is very important and is one of the reasons vector
fields play an important role in applications. Other exam-
ples include the role of differentiability in approximating
a function via a linear function. This is perhaps the single
most important role of differentiability. Sadly, it rarely
gets the press it deserves. The main goal then is to com-
municate the conceptual aspects of the subject. This will
dictate the style of the course.

• Pace and Style of the Course: There are two

overwhelming factors which will decide the pace and style
of the regular lecture hours:
 1. There is a tremendous amount of material to be cov-
ered. It is not easy to neglect any chapter of the text.
2. The major use of mathematics in general, and this
course in particular, is not to produce meaningless
numbers out of arid formulae. Rather the use is to
observe patterns, extract the essence from these pat-
terns, deduce logical conclusions from this essence and
then, most importantly, interpret these conclusions.
The last aspect is why most of mathematics has yet to
be done and is also precisely why mathematics plays
such an important role in human affairs. In other
words, the path to the formula and then the numbers
is at least as interesting, and certainly more important
than the formula itself.

Keeping in mind these two factors the style of the lectures

will be as follows:

1. Most of the lecture will consist of motivating the mate-

rial via i) the naturality of the concept to be studied on
basis of prior experience; ii) plausibility arguments for
the proposed formulae and properties; iii) constructive
proofs where this is possible; and iv) Relating various
parts of the syllabus to one another (thus, frequently
my lectures will also mention, in brief, material that
will be covered in detail later).
2. Most concepts will be illustrated via a calculational
example. But I will not spend too much time on them.
Calculations are important to get a good feel for the
subject. Every student should supplement the calcu-
lations I do in class by going over the drill problems
in the HW. No student should feel bashful in solic-
iting my help (outside lecture hours), the TA’s help
and other sources. You are reminded that my office
hours are NOT the only times you can meet with me
in person. iii) I will go relatively slow in the begining
(except when reviewing material from courses which
are prerequisites) so that everyone gets at least a little
of the subject. I will then pick up the pace towards the
latter half of the course. Inevitably this means things
will get hectic towards the end of the course - pre-
cisely when they are getting hectic in other courses.
Unfortunately there is no universal solution to this
problem.
 • HOMEWORK LIST:
•: This is a partial HW list. These will not be graded.
You should also bear in mind that the purpose of these
HWs is not one of preparation for the midterms and fi-
nal. Furthermore, since several topics will be covered in
a fashion different from that in the text, you should pay
careful attention to he prototype problems on these topics
which I will solve during my lectures.
N.B: The page numbers below are for both the V and
the IV edition (in that order)
• Chapter 1:
Section 1.2: I will assign analogues of Qs 14, 15 on Pg
36/ 37 for higher dimensional vectors.
Pg 86 - 87/ Pg 73 - 74: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9 (optional), 13,
15
Pg 88-93/ Pg 75 -79: 11, 27, 28, 29
Section 1.4 will be covered when we study integration.
You should pay attention to the prototype problems I
solve.
• Chapter 2:
Section 2.1: 1, 2a, b, 4, 6, 17, 18. I will assign additional
questions on aspects of this section not in the text, when
we cover this material in the semester.
Section 2.2: 1, 9, 15, 20 (optional). Additional problems
on determining boundary points, open sets etc., will be
assigned during the semester.
Section 2.3: 1, 2, 5, 7, 12, 13, 15, 18, 20
Section 2.4: (note this section will become more impor-
tant when we discuss line integrals, so we will go thru’ it
in greater detail than there is in the text at that juncture):
5 -9
Section 2.5: 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,
19, 24, 27, 29 (many more problems on the chain rule will
be discussed during the semester).
Section 2.6: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18 (op-
tional), 19, 22 (optional) (this is where we will cover Lie
derivatives etc., You should pay close attention to the
prototype problems I discuss on these topics).
Pg 173-180/ Pg 164-170: 6, 7, 8, 12, 14 (optional), 21,
23 (optional), 25, 29, 39, 41, 47-49 (optional), 54 (op-
tional).
: Chapter 3:
Sec 3.1: 1, 5, 15, 17
Sec 3.2: 7 (optional)
Sec 3.3: 1, 4, 9, 41, 30 - both directly and via calcu-
lus (more problems on positive and negative definiteness,
global extrema will be assigned during the semester).
Sec 3.4: 1- 5 (it is sufficient to just set up the Lagrange
multiplier equations), Exc 10 and 11 (do both with La-
grange multipliers and via methods of Sec 3.3 - once again
it suffices to set up the Lagrange multiplier equations), 20
(optional), 23 (optional)
Sec 3.5: 2, 7, 8, 10 c), 12
Sec 3.6: Time permitting I will discuss some of the ap-
plications in both the Section and the exercises.
Pg 255-260/ Pg 242 - 247: 13, 16, 19 (optional), 25, 30-
35 (optional - this circle of problems can be better solved
via orthogonal projections).
• For the remainder of the course we will heavily use
differential forms. So you should pay attention to the
prototype problems I solve. I will point out some prob-
lems in the text which come close to my approach at the
appropriate juncture.
 MATH 2451 - REQUIRED SIGNED
STATEMENT
Fall 2005
V. Ramakrishna

• Please read the following statement. Sign your name, print your
full name where indicated.

I have received the handout regarding grading policies, aims, pace

and style of the course, and the syllabus for the course. This hand-
out was fully explained in the first lecture. I have also read it and
understood it.
SIGNATURE:
PRINTED FULL NAME:
MAJOR:
(PLEASE DO NOT WRITE YOUR SSN OR STU-
DENT ID NUMBER)