Homework 4 / exam 1 / office hours

A number of items on the docket for this email:

– The complete homework 4 assignment is posted in Assignments
– I made a mistake in my solution set for the exam, in part (a) of question 3. The correct answer is that the population after 3 months can be at most 8 times the current population, not at most twice the current population. I’ve just updated the solution set on Blackboard. I’m very sorry for my carelessness. 
– I’m not sure whether the grader caught my error, so if you were unjustly marked wrong on that problem come see me and I’ll change your grade accordingly. If you were unjustly marked correct, keep the points — my treat. If you have other issues with grading come see me — particularly if you were docked an excessive amount of points for a small arithmetic error. My rubric calls for only one or two points off (usually — maybe more depending on where it occurs and how egregious it is) in most cases of small calculation errors, so if you lost 8 points for a very small mistake you might be entitled to some of the points back. Please understand that it is difficult for the grader to follow your calculation through to see if your mistake was purely calculation-based or representative of a more grave shortcoming of yours (especially with ~115 exams to grade), so try not to get too frustrated.
– I’ll be in my office from 3:00 – 5:15 pm tomorrow (Thursday 3 October) to deal with exam grading issues. If you didn’t get to pick up your exam in class today, you can get it then. You can also come by next week — after class on Monday or during regular office hours on Tuesday.
– If you’re feeling down about your exam grade, watch some Monty Python sketches. That’ll cheer you right up. If you’re feeling good about your exam grade, read some news articles. That’ll sadden you right down.
– R.I.P. Tom Clancy. I was not a big fan of his, but a lot of people loved his work, so big ups to him.
– The kouign amann is a buttery, caramelly pastry from Brittany, France. It is really tasty. I made this one:
  
from a recipe by David Lebovitz that you can find here. You can buy them from Dominique Ansel (maker of the cronut) in NYC.
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tl;dr – Come on, there’s no tl;dr. Just read the damn email. (At least the first, math-related parts of it.) Gee whiz.

Homework 4 posted / old homework

The first part of homework 4 is posted in the Assignments tab. You should get started on it; it’ll be a longer assignment than usual since it covers three lectures of material and you have a week and a half to do it.

Also, come to office hours tomorrow to get your old homeworks (and if you have questions, of course).

Also also, the next exam is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, 23 October 2013, and will cover chapter 3.
Also also also, how dope is Gursky?
 

Exam 1 solutions available for your perusal

I know what you’ve been thinking. “Ayo what’s good with those exam 1 solutions? When will they be available for our perusal? I’m mad curious about the solutions and it’s keeping me up at night.” Well, dear students, here they are. Enjoy the bounty, for life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

And I know I said I’d have the solutions up by Thursday night, and technically it’s Friday right now, but how do you know I’m not in the Central Time Zone? I didn’t say it would be Thursday night everywhere in the world.
Nah, I’m in New York. But I did post the solutions on Thursday night. Check the timestamp yo.

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Steve Reich is one of the great composers of the 20th (and 21st) century; he, along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass, developed the style of music that became known as minimalism (though Glass prefers the term “music with repetitive structures”). His most famous piece is Music for 18 Musicians, and it’s crazy good. I was fortunate enough to catch a performance at a chapel at Vassar College about five years ago. That year I also saw a 45th anniversary performance of Riley’s In C at Carnegie Hall in which Philip Glass, the Kronos Quartet, and Riley himself were among the performers. It was tight.

Andrew’s office hrs / the big font reveal

TA Andrew will hold office hours on Friday this week, from 9am – 11am in Harriman 010.

The font on the test was Helvetica Light, which has been in the news (as much as a font is ever in the news) because it is the font for Apple’s new mobile operating system iOS 7.
The solutions will be posted no later than tomorrow night, unless something crazy happens.
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Henri Cartier-Bresson was a photographer active in the middle of the 20th century, and an early adopter of the 35mm format, which allowed him to capture the “decisive moment” (this became the English title of his most famous book of photographs). He was one of the first practitioners of street photography, a field in which his influence remains strong.
“Photographier: c’est dans un même instant et en une fraction de seconde reconnaître un fait et l’organisation rigoureuse de formes perçues visuellement qui expriment et signifient ce fait”
(“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.”)
*Incidentally, I originally wrote “He was one of the first street photographers, a field in which his influence remains strong.” I changed it because “street photographers” isn’t a field, “street photography” is. Quick grammar tip.

HW 3 solutions + NO GRAPHING CALCULATORS ALLOWED
The solutions to homework 3 are posted in the Documents tab. Also, you’re not allowed to use graphing calculators on the exam; scientific or four-function calculators are permitted, but not the one on your mobile telephone device. Obviously. 
This is Goya’s painting Perro semihundido, sometimes called simply El perro. When the great Catalan painter Joan Miró visited the Museo del Prado for the last time before his death, he requested to see two paintings: Las meninas by Velázquez, which is the greatest painting of all time, and El perro.
 

Suggested practice problems for Wednesday’s Exam 1

Section 1.3: 5, 7, 9

Section 1.4: 9
Section 2.1: 5
Section 2.2: 3, 5, 17, 27, 33
Section 2.4: 9, 25(a), 31
Section 2.5: 5, 7, 9, 11, 15
– You should also review mathematical induction and the examples thereof that we did in class. Another exercise in induction: prove that the sum of the first n positive integers is n(n+1)/2.
– After you’re done with that, check out this picture of Bob Marley that was for sale for $100 at a visitor center near the Grand Canyon:
bob 2013-08-08 11.46.45
One hundred American dollars for that.

Exam 1 will be Wednesday the 25th of September, in class

As announced in class today, the first exam will take place on Wednesday, 25 September 2013, during the usual class time (8:30am) in the usual classroom (Humanities 1003). The test will cover all material from the beginning of the year up to and including today’s (Wednesday, 18 September) lecture. You will be tested on concepts as well as techniques, so make sure you understand the ‘why’ of everything, not just the ‘how’.

What we’ve done:
– Mathematical induction
– Transpose of a matrix, symmetric matrices
– Section 1.2 (systems of linear equations)
– Section 1.3 (Markov chains, dynamic models)
– Section 1.4 (linear programming, over- and underdetermined systems)
– Section 2.1 (matrices, vectors)
– Section 2.2 (matrix multiplication)
– Section 2.4 (matrix algebra)
– Section 2.5 (norms and bounds, eigenvalues and eigenvectors)
There is no homework this week.
If you’re nervous about the test, just think about how nice-looking cooked mushrooms can be:
shroomin
And check out that cheese!
cheeese
Feeling better, right?
Unrelated to the exam: wheat scenes from Love and Death can be found here and here

Homework 3 posted
Esteemed students,
You will find the third homework assignment in the Assignment tab. It’s due Wednesday the 18th of September.
Here is a picture of a building that used to be a White Castle, but now is not one. How sad.

wc

But wait actually White Castle is not very good, so this is not so sad after all.
Remember: As Jack Handey reminds us, it’s funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure, but they never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating. Don’t be like the pirates — appreciate life’s journey. Also, don’t steal or murder.