Location and Time: This class meets on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8:30 to 9:20 AM in 120 DeBartolo Hall. On Thursdays we will meet from 3:30 to 4:20 in Pasquerilla Center 107.
Instructor: Jeff Diller. You can reach me at my office 356 CCMB, by phone at 631-7694, or by email at ``Jeffrey.A.Diller.1@nd.edu''. Tentatively, I'm scheduling office hours for Monday 4-5 PM and Wedensday 1-3 PM. PLEASE take advantage of my office hours--they are time set aside for you, and you need no excuse or appointment to use them.
Textbook: Elementary Differential Equations (6th Edition) by Boyce and DiPrima. We will also use a supplementary paperback Differential Equations with Mathematica (2nd Edition) .
What this course is about: People who apply math in other subjects--e.g. physics, biology, economics, chemistry, and electrical engineering--often do so via differential equations. They seek to understand a function that interests them by writing down an equation that relates the function to one or more of its derivatives. My hope in this course is to provide you with a thorough introduction to ordinary differential equations. While I will certainly cover various techniques for finding explicit solutions to differential equations, I also plan to stress `qualitative' and `numerical' aspects of the subject---i.e. understanding the behavior of solutions to a differential equation even when explicit formulae for such solutions cannot be found . In real applications, it is rather rare to encounter a differential equation whose solution can be written down explicitly, so it is important to have techniques that go beyond finding explicit solutions. The equations that do admit explicit solutions end up serving as idealized `models' that shed light on the more complicated equations that one actually encounters.
What This Course Will Cover: We will go through chapters one through five and seven through nine of the book by Boyce and DiPrima. The topics of the course and the time we will alot to each are (roughly) as follows:
Homework: I'll assign problems from every section covered in class, and you will turn these in to me before class every Friday. Homework assigned by Wedensday will be due on the following Friday. In addition to textbook assignments there will be several Mathematica (sort of an all-purpose math software package) oriented assignments. You will have two weeks to complete each of these, and you may collaborate with up to two other students in the class (each group turning in only one assignment). An evolving list of homework assignments by date of assignment will be available on my webpage at
Quizzes: There will be a quiz every Thursday (excepting exam weeks and the first week of class).
Exams: There will be two in class exams and a comprehensive final exam. The dates for these are as follows:
| First exam | Thursday, February 18 |
| Second exam | Thursday, April 15 |
| Final | Friday, May 7 (8-10 AM) |
Late Homeworks/Missed Quizzes and Exams: Turning homework in late and/or missing quizzes and exams is generally unacceptable. I will allow exceptions only with an excuse from the Associate Vice President for Residential Life. Conflicts with exams (especially finals!) in other courses should be resolved in the first week of classes.
Grades: Your final grade will be computed as a weighted average of the following:
| regular homework | 10% |
| computer homework | 15% |
| quizzes | 15% |
| exams | 15% each |
| final exam | 30% |
Note that I will drop your lowest quiz score for the semester.
The End: If you like, you can go up one page, or go to Jeff Diller's Home Page.