Course Booklet Information Page
The course meets in the J+ block, from 3:00 - 4:15pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
in Room BP-5.
My office hours are from 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
on Tuesdays and Fridays, in Room BP-212; I am also available by appointment.
Textbooks
There are two textbooks for this course. The required book
is An introduction to partial differential equations by
Pinchover and Rubinstein, published by Cambridge University Press.
The recommended book is Applied Functional Analysis by
Griffel, published by Dover. Both are available from the bookstore
or, more cheaply, from amazon.
Grades
There will be (roughly) weekly homework assignments for this course, a
midterm, and a final exam.
Homework will account for 40% of your final grade, with each
assignment weighted equally. Typically, homework assignments will be
distributed in Tuesday's class, and collected the following Thursday
(i.e., 9 days later) in class. Late homework will be penalized
by 10% per day late - the only exception to this is that you are
permitted two "freebies" in this system, that can be used to excuse a
single day's lateness on a single assignment each. (These may be
compounded to hand in one assignment two days late.) You are
permitted (and, generally, expected) to discuss the assignments with
others in the class, but must hand in your own work individually.
Both the midterm and the final will consist of two components, a
"take-home" exam and an oral examination. The take-home components
will be directly based on the material covered in class and on
homework assignments. Written solutions will be due in class for the
midterm and at a fixed time for the final, with no late submissions
accepted. The subsequent oral examinations will be up to one hour in
length, scheduled at a mutually acceptable time, where we will discuss
your answers to the problems from the take-home component. No notes
will be allowed for the oral examinations. The midterm exam will be
worth 20% of your final grade (10% written and 10% oral), while the
final exam will be worth 40% of your final grade (20% written and 20%
oral). Again, you are permitted (and expected) to discuss the
solutions with take-home components with others in the class, but must
hand in your own work individually.
Academic Integrity
While there are no in-class exams in
this course, students are required to abide by the university
guidelines on academic integrity. For full details,
see this link.
Disability Services
If you are requesting an accommodation due to a documented disability,
you must register with the Disability Services Office at the beginning
of the semester. To do so, call the Student Services Desk at
617-627-2000 to arrange an appointment with Linda Sullivan, Program
Director of Disability Services.
Learning Objectives
This course addresses the following learning objectives of the
Ph.D. Program in Mathematics
1.b. Clear understanding of key hypotheses and conclusions
1.c. Synthesis of formal theory into a comprehensive picture of
mathematical phenomena
1.d. Application of general theory to specific examples
1.e. Sharpening of intuition through appropriate counterexamples
3.a. Explanation of key ideas and general strategies
3.b. Motivation of underlying issues
3.c. Clear oral presentation of arguments
3.f. Thinking on one's feet; fielding questions