Course Syllabus

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Professor: Natalie Wellen (she/her), nwellen at uw dot edu
Office hours: MWF 10:50-11:50 PT ( https://washington.zoom.us/j/96098468181 )
Teaching Assistant: Kenan Li (he/him), email lknan at uw dot edu
Email policy: I will not answer questions about problem sets, course material, or coding via email. Please use Piazza  (do not post answers or working code) and office hours. Emails and Piazza will be checked at least once a day Monday through Friday. The instructors may not check Piazza over the weekend, but students are still welcome to use this resource to discuss material and help one another during that time. When emailing the instructors, please refer to them by their first name. 
If you are emailing about problems with turning in materials due to faulty internet, then the relative materials (i.e. homework) need to be attached to the email.
Zoom Courtesies: Please include your pronouns in your name on Zoom. While asking questions and participating in discussions please turn on your video.
Prerequisites: Math 126 or  Q SCI 293
Schedule: Course is offered asynchronously. Recordings will be posted at or before the scheduled class time so they may be watched during office hours. You are welcome to enter the Zoom meeting for office hours while watching in case any questions come to you during the pre-recorded lecture.
  • For a schedule of course topics and assignments see Modules page. (Subject to change)
  • Midterm: Wednesday July 21st.
  • Final: Friday August 20th.
  • UW Academic Calendar

Homework Policy and Grading

Grades will come from the following:

  • Problem Sets: 8 problem sets. The first problem set is worth 50 points, subsequent ones are worth 100 points each.
  • Midterm and Final exams: 100 points each
    You will have a 24 hour period to choose when to start the exam, 1 hour to take the exam with 10 minutes for scanning and uploading your work.
  • Participation on Piazza: 50 points.
  • Total: 1000 total points.
Problem sets will consist of 2 parts due on Fridays at 9pm Pacific Time:
  • Matlab code submitted to Autograder. You will have 5 chances for submission.
  • Non-coding problems submitted  are submitted to Gradescope. These problems may be written up by hand and scanned in, or typeset using LaTex. (LaTeX Resources) Please save non-coding problems as a pdf.

Course Description:

Nearly every discipline with a quantitative component including engineering, physical sciences, social sciences, finance, computer graphics, big data, and machine learning rely on linear algebra. Numerical computation greatly enables modeling the data analysis in these fields. In order to utilize linear algebra and computing for problem solving, it is essential to understand how to set up problems (in the linear framework and numerically), determine when well defined solutions exist, write programs and algorithms in MATLAB to solve these problems, evaluate whether the algorithm will find the solution efficiently, and evaluate the accuracy of the computation. For a detailed list of topics see the modules.

Textbook & Resources:

No textbook will be required for this course. We will supply class notes in each module.

My notes will be mostly based on Prof. Leveque and Prof. Hetmaniuk Notes for Linear Algebra and Prof. Nathan Kutz notes for numerical analysis, but I will skip around, deviate, and provide my own notes.
Here are a few other freely available resources I may also reference:

Matlab Resources

Matlab Resources: You need to obtain a copy of or access to MATLAB. You can get it from a variety of sources:

Hierarchy of Resources:

There are only two people on the teaching team this quarter, and it is important to us that we are able to help everyone who needs it.  Therefore, you should seek direct assistance only after having exhausted other means.  If you have a question, your first resource should be the course materials: lectures, lecture notes, previously answered discussion questions, etc.  If this does not answer your question, then please post a new question on Piazza or ask during office hours. Office hours should not be the first resource you utilize to seek help.  If office hours are very crowded, we may refuse to answer questions during office hours that you have not already asked in some form on the discussion board.  We expect that you will have a clear question formulated and that you will be able to explain how you have tried to approach the problem already.  It is not a reasonable use of our time to ask us to simply read through your work and tell you if it is correct.

Group work and Academic Honesty policy: 

You are encouraged to discuss and work in groups to solve problem sets. Each student must write their own solution, and non-coding problems need to show steps that a peer could clearly follow. Note that tools like MATLAB may be used to check the final answer of computations for the non-coding portion of homework, however full homework solutions from an online source may not be used.
You must write up your own solution and your own code. Please reference and acknowledge help received on the homework, i.e. classmates, Piazza discussions, or a link to another internet source (Wikipedia). Copy, pasting, and editing from another student or online resource will be considered plagiarism and students suspected of plagiarism will be reported to the appropriate Dean's Representative according to the policies communicated by Community Standards & Student Conduct (CSSC). Students shall abide by the University of Washington Academic Responsibility policies, which are outlined at https://depts.washington.edu/grading/pdf/AcademicResponsibility.pdf. Acedemic Misconduct is defined here: https://www.washington.edu/cssc/facultystaff/academic-misconduct/, and more information about student conduct may be found here: https://www.washington.edu/studentconduct/. Any form of dishonesty in an assignment will lead to a zero on the assignment. Other consequences, including a failing grade in the course, will be determined based on the seriousness of the offense or number of offenses at my discretion.

Note: Use of websites or online forums which provide solutions for class assignments is not allowed. You are also not allowed to distribute course materials to any individual or corporation outside of this course.

For students that have attempted every assignment (including turning it in late), the lowest grade will be dropped from grade calculations. Late homework without official reasons (medical, etc.) will get a zero. Everything you need for the course should be on Canvas and Piazza, please coordinate with colleagues/classmates (do not email me to help you catch up if you fall behind). 

 

 Access and Accommodations:

Your experience in this class is important to me. It is the policy and practice of the University of Washington to create inclusive and accessible learning environments consistent with federal and state law. If you have already established accommodations with Disability Resources for Students (DRS), please activate your accommodations via myDRS so we can discuss how they will be implemented in this course.

If you have not yet established services through DRS, but have a temporary health condition or permanent disability that requires accommodations (conditions include but not limited to; mental health, attention-related, learning, vision, hearing, physical or health impacts), contact DRS directly to set up an Access Plan. DRS facilitates the interactive process that establishes reasonable accommodations. Contact DRS at disability.uw.edu.

Religious Accommodation Policy:

Accommodations in this classroom further extend to religious beliefs. This means that if you have expected absences or hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience or for organized religious activities, I will accommodate you.
Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy (https://registrar.washington.edu/staffandfaculty/religious-accommodations-policy/). Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form (https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious-accommodations-request/).
Also, if you feel comfortable telling me about any required accommodations please let me know via email.

Safecampus

It is important to take care of ourselves and others. To find out more about free resources offered for UW students regardless of where they are located, please look at https://www.washington.edu/safecampus/.

Course Summary:

Date Details Due