Math 307 Page, Fall 2011
This page concerns Math 307 Section 101, for Winter 2011-12 term I (i.e., Fall 2011).
Not all course material are available at all times (especially solution sets to homeworks).
| Final Exam | Final exam is Tuesday, December 6, 8:30am (ouch!), in the Math Building, room 100. Office hours before final exam: Monday, December 5, 9:30-11am, in Mathematics Building room 210 (we will probably move to a nearby office). |
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| Overview and Materials | This course has changed dramatically in the past few years, and now emphasizes applications and has a computational component. We will use the text "Google's PageRank and Beyond" for roughly the first eight weeks; we shall use these notes for the remaining material on curve fitting. An overview for this course is available. A blog (last revised November 25, 2011) will be used to say roughly where we are in the course, and to supplement the text and other materials with specific examples; the blog is not meant to be self-contained. Other materials may be added to the course. |
| Midterm | The midterm will take place 1-2pm on Wednesday, November 2, in LSK 201. Office hours before the midterm: Monday, 11:45-12:45, Mathematics Building, room 210 (i.e., my math office); Tuesday, 2-3pm, Mathematics Building, room 102 (this is a small classroom). The topics to be covered include (1) eigenvalues/vectors, diagonalization, and powers of matrices (in particular Markov chains and stationary distributions) (e.g. Problems 1-5 of the Sample Problems, Homework 1), PageRank of the H and/or S matrix (no damping) (e.g., Problems 6-9 of the Sample Problems, Homeworks 2,3); PageRank of G (with damping, i.e., G = alpha S + (1-alpha) e v^T ) (e.g., Problems 10-12 of the Sample Problems); norms and truncating the PageRank expansion (e.g., Problems 12-17 of the Sample Problems). The midterm will not cover sensitivity analysis (e.g., the derivative of PageRank, pi(alpha), with respect to alpha). The Sample Problems below have some addition practice midterm questions plus a list of the formulas/information I will provide. Solutions are now available; the scaling of the midterm takes the raw midterms score, x, out of 24, to f(x) given by 50 x / 6 for x <=6, and by 100 + 50 (x-24)/18 for x >= 6 (this means that f(0)=0, f(6)=50, f(24)=100, and everything else is linearly interpolated). |
| Applications | The course will be organized around applications. Broadly speaking, one can view this course as having two applications: PageRank (roughly the first eight weeks), and Curve Fitting (roughly the last four weeks). Each of these applications involves numerous ideas and techniques in linear algebra. |
| Computations | Homework will involve computations, which are to be done in Matlab or Octave. For help with GNU Octave, you might start with the GNU Octave home or their FAQ page. For help with MATLAB, you might try the MATLAB documentation page. |
| Homework |
Homework #1 is now available and due on
September 23, 2011.
Solutions.
Homework #2, due September 30, 2011: Problems 6, 7, and 8 of the Sample Problems below. Solutions. Homework #3 is now available and due on October 7, 2011. Solutions. Homework #4, due October 19, 2011: Problems 12, 14, and 15 of the Sample Problems below. Solutions. Homework #5, due October 28, 2011: Problems 18 and 21 of the Sample Problems below. Solutions. Homework #6, due November 21, 2011. Solutions. |
| Sample Problems |
Here are some
Sample Problems that may be (1) homework
problems, (2) supplemental problems, and/or (3) sample exam questions;
last updated October 31, 2011.
Here are some
more sample problems, mainly on least squares
and related material covered after the midterm;
last updated December 1, 2011.
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| Other News | No news is good news. |
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