Math 129: Calculus II for Engineers and Scientists (39487 D)
— Prof. Nathaniel Emerson
Professor Emerson’s Course Homepage
Office hours in the final week: 4-5 pm on Thursday (May 4) and 3-5 pm on Friday (May 5) in the Math Center (KAP 263). This summer, I will be a TA for Math 118 (Business Calculus).
A Final Poem for My Students*
The Final Day is drawing near
My fellow scholars, I wish you cheer
May problems be met with ease
And solutions emerge like a breeze
Rise and prevail, one and all
You shall triumph, big and small
Show your knowledge with limitless pride
And may your good luck forever abide
Your friend in time of need,
Ivan
A Midterm Poem for My Students*
(Click here to listen)
To my students who are feeling down,
Your midterm may have caused a frown.
Yet there’s more to you than just one grade,
Your potential cannot be weighed.
Sequences and limits can cause some pain,
But with L’Hopital’s rule, you’ll not be in vain.
Partial fraction decomposition may be a chore,
But with practice, it’ll soon be easy to adore.
Trig substitution and integration by parts,
Can feel like a maze that twists and starts.
Please keep going, for it’s just a test,
And soon you’ll be among the very best.
Just don’t let tough problems bring you down,
For you are talented, don’t let the spirit drown.
Embrace all mistakes with open arms,
They’ll pave the way to prevent future harms.
So keep your head up and your heart strong,
Never let any setback take away your song.
Keep learning and growing, and with time you’ll see,
Calculus will soon become a breeze for thee!
Your friend in time of need,
Ivan
Discussion notes: Click here. (Copyright claim: all handout problems here are prepared by Professor Emerson, and all solutions and notes there are written by me.) In addition, you can find the same files in each corresponding folder under the “Content” item in Blackboard for this course.
Discussion plan:
I’d like to tell you which exercises I plan to discuss on the board the day before each discussion (e.g., Monday and Wednesday nights). In this way, you can have a bit more control over the discussion in your preview (if you want) and maybe focus more on the other problems. Please feel free to let me know any other problems you want me to cover in the last column of the following sheet! Here’s the link to our corresponding Google sheets. And below is the embedded version of the same sheet (which may only be viewed but not edited; you can edit this sheet by entering the link above).
Discussion time and location:
10:00—10:50 am on Tue, Thu (39488 R)
11:00—11:50 am on Tue, Thu (39489 R)
Both in SGM 226
Office hours:
2-3 pm on Monday, 1-2 on Tuesday, 2-3 on Wednesday, and by appointment*
*Feel free to schedule an appointment with me outside of my regular office hours! We can either do it in the Math Center physically or in my personal zoom room online. Send me an email so we can set up a time, and then I’ll send you my zoom link. You can find my weekly schedule here to check my availability.
Office-hour locations:
Math Center [KAP 263] and Zoom
If you want to join my office hours by Zoom, click here. The Math Center Assistant on duty will assign you to my breakout room.
Note I: As a rule of the Math Center, TAs are there for *all* students (not just their own students) when holding office hours. So you can go there anytime to do homework or get help from any TAs. And I will surely be there at least during my office hours. You can check out here the Math Center Schedules including all TAs’ office hours this semester.
Note II: The Math Center is run on a drop-in basis without appointments. Thus, if many students show up during my office hours, I’ll try to let you ask one question at a time in order of arrival (unless you have to leave soon) and then continue the cycle, to ensure everyone there has a chance to discuss questions with me instead of waiting for nothing. Feel free to give me any feedback!
Email responding: If you send me an email before 10 pm, I’ll definitely be able to respond to you the same day. (I might have to reply the next morning to emails received after 10). In particular, if you email me 8-9:20 am on Tue & Thu mornings (when I’m usually preparing for your following discussions), you can expect me to get back to you within 5 minutes. In case I didn’t make it the same day, most likely it was because I didn’t see your email somehow, so you may resend the same email to remind me.
Syllabus quiz rule and make-ups: In our discussion, there’s a quiz lasting 10 minutes long on Thursday when a homework assignment is due. Note that we have 2 versions of every quiz, one for each discussion. We should not use calculators or notes during quizzes. According to Prof. Emerson, any student can make up 2 quizzes per semester. After 2 make-ups, you should contact Prof. Emerson if you want more chances. So if you have to make them up, you can either come to any of my office hours in the Math Center or schedule a time (e.g., 7:30—7:50 pm) to join my personal zoom room with your camera on. I’ve published my weekly schedule here for your reference. Note if I write “Math 129 quiz makeup” on my calendar, that means this time slot has been reserved by some student (of course I never include their names there).
Note that Professor Emerson announced that all quiz makeups after the second midterm must be done in person instead of over Zoom. Therefore, if you need to make up a quiz, you can come to the Math Center during any of my office hours and you’ll have access to a separate quiet room to complete it.
Quiz grading: Prof. Emerson designed the grading rubrics for Quizzes 1-2 and Quiz 6, which I then utilized to grade your quizzes. [Meanwhile, rubrics for all Exams are created by Emerson.] For the remaining quizzes, I’m responsible for both developing the rubrics and grading them accordingly. I usually finish grading and publish scores on Gradescope by Saturday night. In case I made a blunder in grading, please don’t hesitate to submit a regrading request in Gradescope (or directly email me) so I can fix your scores.
Grader: Xinyun Zhang (Email: xzhang60″at-sign”usc.edu)
Textbook: Essential Calculus (2nd edition) by Stewart (Click here for the pdf file)
Additional course resources:
All past final exams since 2001: https://dornsife.usc.edu/mathcenter/126/
Prof. Steven Heilman’s Lecture Notes
Prof. Steven Heilman’s Solutions to USC Math 126 Fall 2019 Final