Homework 1

Homework 1: Due Friday 10 January

For many of the problems for which I state that no explanation is necessary, it still might be a good idea to show your work and/or explain your reasoning.

Autobiography: Write a brief paragraph (or send me an email) describing the math classes you've taken previously. Be sure to indicate where you took those classes: high school, COA, another college. Feel free to mention any other information about your math background that might be relevant, interesting, and/or amusing. (10 points).

Chapter 1.1:

1. 2.
2. 4. No explanations necessary.
3. 5.
4. 6.
5. 8
6. 14.
7. 23. No explanations necessary.
8. 28.
9. 35.
10. 37.

Chapter 1.2:

1. 1-4. No explanations necessary.
2. 5-7. No explanations necessary.
3. 10.
4. 11. No explanations necessary.
5. 13.
6. 14.
7. 18.
8. 21.
9. 36.

Computer Problem: Maple should be on the desktop of all PCs in the computer labs. Double click on the icon and, after a little bit of whirring, a maple icon will appear. Maple commands are fairly intuitive, but they do take a little getting used to. Maple has some pretty good built-in tutorials. A decent tutorial on plotting with maple can be found here; ignore the stuff about putting titles on plots, though. For Maple help from a real live human, talk to Arber Davidhi or me. I also recommend looking at the page of Maple Help that I've put together.

1. Use Maple to plot f(x) = 4x^2, and then print out the plot. (Hint, Maple doesn't understand 4x^2, but it does understand 4*x^2.) (10 points)
2. Use Maple to plot a cool function, and then print out the plot. Be sure to say why you think the function is cool. (10 points)

Bonus:

1. 1.2: 22

Web page maintained by dave@hornacek.coa.edu.