This course will generally consist of two 50-minute lectures and one 50-minute studio section per week, at the times listed on the front page of Canvas. During weeks when we have a midterm exam, we will not have a studio session.
During lectures, we will go over the course material as found in the textbook, work examples, and answer your (hopefully) many questions.
During studio, you will spend time working on problems in groups, going over problems with your teaching assistant, and further discussing course material.
Starting in the second studio of the semester (Friday, Aug. 29), we will take attendance at each studio. Each participation score will be a grade of 0/1 or 1/1. Students are expected to arrive on time to the studio for which they registered, actively participate, and stay for the full duration of studio. For example, any student who arrives more than five minutes late for studio or leaves before the TA ends studio may be given a 0. A TA may decide to stream or record their studios, but any student who wishes to receive credit for studio participation must attend that studio in person.
We will have 10-minute quizzes during studio on many Fridays throughout the semester. The lowest two quizzes will be dropped.
We will be using Piazza for online class discussion. The system is designed to get you help fast and efficiently from classmates, the TAs, and the instructor. We will check Piazza regularly. Rather than emailing instructors and teaching assistants, please post your questions on Piazza and attend office hours. You can access Piazza through Canvas.
We will use Canvas to post announcements. Students are responsible for reading them.
Homework will be assigned online and will consist of exercises in WeBWorK
(accessed through Canvas). You are responsible for understanding how to solve
all homework exercises for exams and quizzes. Homework assignments
will usually be due at 11:59 PM on
Wednesdays, but sometimes will be due on a different day of the week.
Please see the course calendar for specific dates. During the first week of
class (Aug. 18-22), there is an ungraded practice "Warmup" assignment on
WeBWorK designed to get students accustomed to working with the
system.
The two lowest assignment scores will be dropped. Please
keep in mind that more than one assignment might be due in a given week, so
forgetting to do the WeBWorK one week may cost you both of your dropped
assignments. No late homework will be accepted. Each homework assignment
counts the same amount toward your grade. As noted above, sometimes multiple
homework assignments will be due the same week.
Note that the quiz may sometimes relate closely to the homework that was due the very same week.
If you get a funny error message when clicking the WeBWorK tab in Canvas, try closing the window and trying again. Like many other Georgia Tech websites, the authentication procedure sometimes requires two attempts to login. Other permission denied errors may be solved by deleting your browsers' cookies for the gatech.edu domain.
There are three midterm examinations during the semester on select Wednesdays from 6:30-7:45 PM Atlanta time. See the calendar for exam dates and the syllabus for details.
Absences from quizzes and midterms are generally excused only for Georgia Tech official business, religious holidays, serious illness, and the like. See the syllabus for more details. Absences for religious holidays and university travel should be discussed with your instructor by Wednesday, August 27. We reserve the right to ask for a letter from the Dean of Students to justify an absence under various circumstances. In the event that you miss the midterm for an acceptable reason, you will be able to take a makeup exam on the Monday immediately following the midterm. If this is not possible, then the weight of that midterm will be shifted equally to your remaining exams, including the final exam. As noted above, please see the Missed Work Policy section of the syllabus for details.
The cumulative final exam will be administered on the date and time specially set for Math 1553 by the Institute, namely Tuesday, December 9, from 6:00 – 8:50 PM.
Your numerical grades on homework assignments, quizzes, and exams
will be posted throughout the semester on Canvas. When receiving a
graded quiz or exam, check to be sure it matches the grade
posted on Canvas.
The grading breakdown is as follows.
If you score higher on your final exam than on one of the midterms, then your final exam will count for 32.5% of your grade and your lowest midterm will count for 7.5% of your grade. However, any student found guilty of academic dishonesty of any kind in Math 1553 is ineligible for this policy
CIOS Incentive: If at least 85% of all Math 1553 students complete CIOS evaluations by December 2 at 1:00 PM (Atlanta time), we will drop the 3 lowest quiz grades rather than just the lowest 2 quiz grades.
Final letter grades will be calculated as follows:
After all grades are in and all overall percentage scores for students have been computed, grades are assigned. The standard cutoffs are as follows.
A: [90%–100%], B: [80%–90%), C: [70%–80%), D: [60%–70%), F: [0%–60%)
So, to guarantee an A, get 90% or better overall. (90 means 90, not 89.9) To guarantee at least a B grade, get 80% or better overall, etc. These cutoffs might be adjusted, but only in the downward direction (to make letter grades higher).Progress report grades will be assigned by the deadline set by the Institute. A satisfactory grade will be assigned to all students who tentatively have a C or higher as determined by the instructors.
There is no extra credit, and there are no quiz re-takes or exam re-takes.
Students are expected to fully adhere to Georgia Tech's honor code.