UBC MATH 308, Fall 2010, Announcements

Euclidean Geometry

UBC Math 308, Fall 2010, Announcements

12.01

The final exam will be held on December 14, 3:30pm - 6pm, at MATX 1100 (Math Annex).
- It will cover Chapters 1, 2, 3, and sections 5.1 - 5.3.
- A formula sheet to be provided with the exam will be posted.
- Office hours: Dec 3 and Dec 10, 11am-11:50am; Dec 13, 2pm-3pm.
- Homework 10 will be assigned but not collected.

USRA (NSERC - Undergraduate Student Research Awards):
- The USRA is a program where students do research in the Summer, May to August, and get paid about $5600 during this period.
- It gives you a valuable research experience.
- In addition, it would be a significant part of your CV for your future graduate school/job applications. Your supervisor, having close interaction with you, would be an ideal letter writer.
- The Math Department has a UBC Math USRA web site which can be found when going to math home page, then Undergraduate section, and then Employment. The web site contains information about eligibility, the application procedure, available projects and previous projects.
- The Math Department gets about 30 applications each year for 11-12 positions. Good grades (in math courses) are the main evaluation criterion. We have had students from all years 1-4. Most of them tend to be math honours/math majors, but we have also offered USRAs to students from other majors, such as engineering, physics, statistics, and also from outside UBC.
- We have right now a few projects up on this web site.

11.17

The Fall Teaching Evaluation Survey will be released to students on Sunday, November 21, 2010, and will close at 11PM on Sunday, December 5, 2010. Note that survey results will not be released to instructors until course grades have been submitted.

Statistics of the midterm exams:
average standard deviation 0-10 11-20 21-30 31-40 total

MT1 28.4 (71.0%) 8.2 (20.4%) 4 3 19 27 53

MT2 27.67 (69.2%) 7.26 (18.1%) 1 10 19 22 52

The photos of your models are posted. Check your own photo: No photo means no record!

11.15

I emailed the following hint for the last problem of h7: Let O =L_1 intersect L_2. Find a projective transformation t mapping O, V, A and B' to [1,0,0], [0,1,0], [0,0,1] and [1,1,1]. Solve the equations for Lines t(VA), t(OB') so that you can solve the Point t(A'). Similarly solve all other Lines and Points. (There is a free parameter for Line CC'.) Show that t(V), t(P), and t(Q) are collinear.
If you want to be even faster, here is another hint. Consider the restriction of the image of the figure under t in the embedding plane z=1. Then t(O) and t(V) are ideal Points, and we have two orthogonal families of parallel Lines.

11.09

The final exam will be held on December 14, 3:30pm - 6pm, at MATX 1100 (Math Annex).

11.03

To clarify: the second midterm will not cover materials covered in MT2, nor the second part of §3.3.4 on Fundamental Theorem of Projective Geometry.

11.03

The second midterm on next Wednesday will cover §2.1.2 to §3.3.4. It is of the same format as MT1. A partial list of h7 and formulas to be provided in MT2 is posted.

I will accept the bonus project (the model of a hyperboloid by generating lines) before MT2.

10.18

Final exam is scheduled on December 14, 3:30pm - 6pm. Location TBA.
Check if you have an exam hardship (3 exams *within* 24 hours with Math being the middle exam) or an exam conflict, or if you cannot make the time for religious reasons. If you have an issue with your schedule, please email Ms. Mar Ness at ness@math.ubc.ca with the details and your UBC student number. UBC *do not* reschedule a student's exam for illegitimate reasons such as a vacation or traveling home for Christmas. All students at UBC are responsible for being here for their entire exam schedule. If you have made travel arrangements before the schedule was released, you will have to change them if there is a conflict.

TA office hour: Tuesday 11am at AA147. Our TA is Mr. Nishant Chandgotia.

TA's comments regarding H3: The questions graded are 1, 2 and 4. A common error this time was the following: applying translation and then reflection is not the same as applying reflection and then translation.

10.13

First midterm exam average is 28.47 (max 40), which amounts to 71.2% and is reasonable. The standard deviation is 8.16 (20%) which is very high. Problem 1 was supposed to be easy but has a low average 6.35. Distribution of marks between 0, 10, 20, 30 and 40: 4, 2, 19, 26.

Responses to midterm exam: (i) There will be an TA office hour on Tuesday at 11am, location TBA. (ii) There will be more easy problems in assignments for practice.

10.05

I learned from today's office hour that there was a typo in the solution to H1: In the last line of its page 2, sin should cos. It has been corrected. Thank you for letting me know!

09.29

The first midterm exam will take place next Wednesday. It will cover up to §2.1.1 but not Theorem 2 on page 49, nor §2.1.2. It will contain 3 or 4 four problems similar to homework. I will post a partial list of homework 3 covered by midterm. It will also include a list of formulas that will be provided in the midterm.

For homework 1, a student had only the first page, and another did not write name. It is your responsibility to staple your homework and write your name since the TA and I cannot help.

09.27

TA comments on H1: The class did better than I expected and some of them came up with rather nice solutions. The main issues were: A lot of people did not write the construction properly, and in Question 6 took b=a

09.24

Bonus project 1: You will earn two additional marks to your final grade if you can make a three dimensional model of a hyperboloid of one sheet as a ruled surface, which is strong enough to hold itself, before the second midterm exam.

09.22

Starting from today, each time the homework is collected, there will be a folder for your feedback. You can keep your feedback anonymous.

The due date for assignment 1 is postponed to Friday.

09.16

The classroom was relocated for a second time to BUCH A203.

09.15

The classroom was relocated from LSK 460 to EOSM 135 effectively today. There is a chance for further relocation.

09.10

The Putnam Competition is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students of Canada and the United States, held on the first Saturday in December. Interested UBC students can visit this page for practice sessions.

09.08

Welcome to Math 308!
Check this page frequently regarding any announcements for the course.

If you have registration issues, please visit this math department Registration Issues webpage. The Math Department Undergraduate Chair, Professor Rajiv Gupta, will help you during the Registration Assistance Sessions. Note that Math Instructors Do Not Have the Authority to Sign You Into Their Section.

The UBC Bookstore informed me that the textbook "may not arrive until September 10th," but it is now available.

I will send a test email to everyone this afternoon. Make sure you can receive it.

	average	standard deviation	0-10	11-20	21-30	31-40	total
MT1	28.4 (71.0%)	8.2 (20.4%)	4	3	19	27	53
MT2	27.67 (69.2%)	7.26 (18.1%)	1	10	19	22	52