Instructor:

Nicholas Touikan (firstname.lastname@unb.ca)

What will the course be like

In this course we will be working through course notes composed by the instructor (see here) and we will meet three times a week for discussions.

Each posted lecture will have an associated exercise set. Students are asked to read the assigned lecture material and ponder the exercises prior to our meetings.

Typically in a math course, the instructor will spend lectures going through proofs. In this case, most of the big proofs will be left as exercises and we will use these as a starting point for our meetings. Hopefully this will be an engaging experience.

Dates and times

Our first meeting will be September 9th our final meeting will be December 9th. All work must be submitted by December 21st.

We will meet Monday, Wendesday, Fridays from 2pm to 3pm, using the dedicated Ms Teams space. Please contact me if you wish to audit the course.

The text

The web version of the text can be found here. Have a look at the introduction for an overview of the course. There is also a references section a the end.

You can also download an automatically generated .pdf printout here. It's a bit buggy, but all the imporant stuff is there.

The textbook's source code is hosted on GitHub. It is still a work in progress.

Assignment schedule

Assignments must be submitted on time to be able to do a rewrite.

Please submit assignments as a single file with your name and assignment number in the filename.

Assignment	Due date
A9 (L16-L17)	December 21
A8 (L14-L15)	December 21
A7 (L12-L13)	December 21
A6 (L10-L11)	November 16 (Reading week)
A5 (L8-L9)	October 26
A4 (L5-L7)	October 5
A3 (L3-L4)	September 28
A2 (L2)
A1 (L1)

Grading

The work for this course will consist of handing in solutions to exercises and may or may not include giving presentations, written projects in a special topic the student finds compelling, or oral examinations.

All work will be graded using the following qualitative scheme:

• A+: A non-trivial solution of optimal elegance and readability.
• A: A correct well-written solution.
• A-: An essentially correct solution, save for some minor details.
• B+: A correct approach, but substantial details are missing.
• B: A promising approach, which at least demonstrates that the student understands the relevant concepts
• B-: A reasonnable approach, considering that there is either misunderstanding of relevant concepts or lack of mastery of a basic technique.
• C: The solution is way off, but there is some value to it.

Good clear writing is important, if a solution is excessively difficult to follow there may be a deduction. An effort will be made to ensure that the workload remains reasonnable.

The scores above provide guidelines, but the final grade will be based on an overall impression:

• A+:Consistently impressive work.
• A:Student has demonstrated a command of all the material in the course.
• A-:Student has demonstrated a command of a substantial amount of the material in the course and demonstrated understanding of all the subject matter.
• B+:Student has demonstrated a command of many key ideas in the course and has demonstrated a good overall understanding.
• B: Student hasn't mastered all material in the course, but has shown a solid mastery in certain key topics. Student has demonstrated the capability of pursuing more advanced topics.
• B-: A good effort, but persistent issues throughout the course were never resolved and were obstacles to mastering key topics.
• C: Student has at least shown that they have learned something useful.