Math 89 Winter 2016
Set Theory

Instructor and General Information

Zachary Evans
Office: 211 Kemeny Hall
Office hours: 3-4pm MWF (after every class session)
Email: Zachary.Evans@dartmouth.edu

I am quite amenable, within reason, to meeting outside office hours if you simply ask and make an appointment.

Textbook: Introduction to Set Theory, by Hrbacek and Jech. Conveniently findable online as a pdf here.

Students with disabilities enrolled in this course and who may need disability-related classroom accommodations should come talk to me in my office early in the term. Students requiring disability-related accommodations must register with the Student Accessibility Service office. Once SAS has authorized accommodations, students must show the originally signed SAS Accommodations/Consent Form and/or a letter on SAS letterhead to me. As a first step, if students have questions about whether they qualify to receive accommodations, they should contact the SAS office. All inquiries and discussions about accommodations will remain confidential.

For your convenience, here is the term calendar as set by the registrar, with deadlines for schedule adjustment and other significant dates.

About the Course

In terms of technical content, the text will be followed fairly closely, especially midway through chapter 4 (about 3 weeks into the course).

The material from Hrbacek and Jech that we will be concerned with lies in chapters 1-9 and chapter 11 sections 1-3. The other chapters are options for additional topics that will be determined (with communal input) later. Those without the math69 pre-requisite needn't worry. The relevant material has been worked directly into the class. No work extrinsic to the course will be required.

Lectures and Assignments

Lectures: Lectures will be held Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 1:45-2:50 in Kemeny 004. Our X-hour slot is Th 1:00-1:50. It will be used for its intended purpose: extra time if needed. Unless I am rushing to finish a topic, lectures are intended to be quite conversational. Questions, disagreements, incredulity and a well-supervised donnybrook or two are all enthusiastically encouraged.
Lectures will be so rapturous that they are slated to be banned in Alabama, Georgia and several other former soviet satellites.

Assignment Logistics: Homework will be assigned piecemeal each class meeting with questions relevant to that day's material. However, all homework assignments from a given week will be due en masse on the Wednesday of the subsequent week. This should keep both the go-getters and procrastinators in a comfortable weekly homework routine. There will be two exams. A midterm and a final. All exams are take home! I plan to give a week plus for work on each exam.

Assignment Content: Most homeworks and exams are not intended to be completed fully. Exams will be naught more than tougher, extended homeworks without the resource of peer-to-peer collaboration. The problems will be given in increasing order of difficulty, with three tiers of difficulty. The tiers will be marked. The introductory problems are expected to be done by everyone. The middle tier problems are what earn you a "nice grade". The particularly difficult problems (placed at the end) will essentially be treated as extra credit. This system is intended to give flexibility to the student from week to week, and to give one the opportunity to work on more fun problems when one has the time and inclination.

Presentations: In exchange for an easier-than-otherwise second exam (i.e. final), I plan to have each student give a presentation near the end of the term. Each student can choose any topic I approve so long as it does not heavily overlap with another student's already approved topic. I plan to make a list of suggested topics when the time for such things is nigh. Also please do not refrain, one can always ask me directly for a topic recommendation. When the time comes, I will accomodate anything from 1-3 presentations (i.e. guest lectures) per class period. You will be responsible for entertaining both your classmates and me. Expectations on this project are necessarily a bit vague. When the preliminary planning of the presentation is underway, one should come speak with me about expectations. I can help specify requirements and standards as the plan for your presentation becomes more clear. There is, however, a simple gauge for the quality of your work. Give a presentation that you're proud of. There is a good chance it will receive a high mark.

Exam I Exam II Presentation
(tentatively) Feb 3rd - Feb 12th TBD TBD

The Honor Principle

On Exams: Use of Hrbacek and Jech and one's personal class notes is allowed. Consulting the instructor for help is also, of course, allowed. Peer-to-peer collaboration is not allowed. All other sources (such as Google, other textbooks etc.) will not be allowed unless explicitly specified at the time of the administration of the exam.

On Homework: Along with the resources explicitly allowed on exams, peer-to-peer collaboration is encouraged on homework! I only ask that you note your conspirators in the heading of your assignment submission. In any case, appropriate collaboration will never hurt your grade. The final execution of the argument/proof (the "write-up") must be singularly yours.

Grading

Late Policy: Homework sets are due on Wednesday of each week. For each class day that the submission is delayed, there will be a 20% deduction in the total credit available for accrual on said submission. Additionally, as soon as solutions to an assignment are made public there will be, unfortunately, no way to justify any credit for submission of that assignment. I intend to make homework solutions available by late evening on the Friday of the week after the assignment was set to be due. These policies are merely to encourage the expedition of the homework feedback process rather than to be a vehicle for the propogation of draconian/archaic deadline policies.
Hint: Turn in -what you have done- on the hw due date. These questions will be graded for full credit. Any lingering questions that you are stuck on can be turned in later for partial credit.

Excused Late Assignments: Late submissions of assignments will only be excused due to significant illness or emergency situations of equitable magnitude.

There should be about 7 week-to-week homework assignments throughout the term. Doing the arithmetic on the chart directly below shows that an exam is worth about three-fold that of a weekly homework assignment.

The "participation" component seen below is rather flexible. Any indication of consistent engagement and contribution to the communal aspect of the course will be taken as fulfilling this criterion.

Component Points
Homework 200
Exam I 100
Exam II 100
Presentation 50
Participation 50
Total 500

Last modified 1 Jan 2016.