Category Archives: Education

After three weeks of instruction, we finally got to our first applications (i.e. “story problems”): exponential growth and decay models. As the problems themselves can be solved in terms of algebra techniques applied to exponential functions, it seems odd to … Continue reading →

At this point in the term, we have developed essentially all of the major abstract and theoretical tools for differentiation, and have a few little loose ends to tie up before we start looking at applications of the derivative (e.g. … Continue reading →

As with most people that have studied mathematics beyond high school, I first encountered implicit differentiation in my initial semester of calculus. It seemed like magic then. In the intervening years, I have seen the idea and the underlying theory … Continue reading →

At the beginning of the term I made the decision / was instructed not to teach the \(\varepsilon\)-\(\delta\) definition of a limit. This class really is directed at engineering and natural sciences majors, so that is, I think, a reasonable … Continue reading →

The big event of the day was returning exams. I’m not sure why, but I always feel kind of uncomfortable when I hand back exams to students that performed poorly. I’m note sure what to do with that… Anyway, the … Continue reading →

I gave an exam during the last class, so rather than the usual format of “What I Taught”/”What Worked”/”What Didn’t Work”, I am going to talk about the exam itself. The exam consisted of 8 multiple choice questions, 8 true/false … Continue reading →

I got locked out of the classroom a few days ago (fortunately, there was one other person in the building at 5:30 on a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of July, and he happened to have a key which opened … Continue reading →

An exam is coming up soon, and the students are beginning to panic a bit about quizzes. I keep trying to tell them that the quizzes are a pretty low key affair (they don’t make up a huge portion of … Continue reading →

Before the term began, I was essentially handed a calendar of sections from the text that needed to be covered on which exams. Since my credentials are newly minted and I have not taught the class before in a university … Continue reading →

With the first week behind us, the class is starting to settle into something of a rhythm. Things are going by very quickly, but the students seem more comfortable with the homework system, and after two quizzes have a better … Continue reading →