AMATH 351: Introduction to Differential Equations and Applications

SLN 10202, MWF 10:30-11:20, Mary Gates Hall 271
(Prerequisites: MATH 126 or MATH 136)

Instructor:

 Chris Curtis
Guggenheim 407
tel: 685-9395
fax: 685-1440
curtchr@amath.washington.edu
office hours: Mon 3:30-5:30, Wed 2:30-3:30
Room: Guggenheim 415L

TA:

 Tom Trogdon
Guggenheim 407
tel: 685-9395
fax: 685-1440
trogdon@amath.washington.edu
office hours: tba

Textbook Course Description Syllabus Lectures Homework Grade Policy

Textbook

Elementrary Differential Equations with Boundary Value Problems. 8th Edition. by Boyce & DiPrima.(Required)
Note, if you are taking the AMATH 351,352,353 sequence, you could save some money by purchasing "Elementary Differential Equations", which has all the chapters we will cover. If you are taking the MATH 307,308,309 sequence, you will need the larger version. So, after reading reviews on Amazon, Boyce and DiPrima seems to be either loved or despised. I personally learned from:
A First Course in Differential Equations, by Dennis G. Zill
Also, I have heard many people swear by:
Schaum's Outline of Differential Equations, 3rd edition
This is also very cheap. Anyway, there are hundreds of introductory ode books out there, and this roughly represents the fact that one person's cake is another's poison. If you can't stand one, try another. It's just a part of the learing process. I won't mind if you ask me to explain material from a different book during office hours.

Course Description

Introductory survey of ordinary differential equations. You could call this class introduction exact methods in linear differential equations with Laplace transforms. There will also be some modeling aspects to the course, though only for the sake of motivation.

Syllabus (Subject to Revision)

1.2, 1.3
2.1, 2.2, 2.4, 2.6
Ch. 3
Ch. 6
Ch. 7
The only reason I'm stating this is for test purposes. Within reason, if a part of the book is not on the syllabus, I will not test you on it.

Lectures

Lecture 2
Lecture 3

Homework

Homework Set 1 (Due 4/9/08) 1.3.2, 1.3.4, 1.3.14, 2.1.13, 2.1.16, 2.1.20, 2.1.30, 2.1.33, 2.2.3, 2.2.8

Grading Policy

Your final grade will be composed of: 60% for homework, 15% for the midterm, and 25% for the final.
<curtchr@amath.washington.edu> Thu Feb 14 16:18:42 PST 2008