The problems are the heart of this course. Some homework problems will show up on the quizzes and exams. Don't fall into the trap of thinking you can make it through this course without keeping up with the homework, or without attending quiz sections. Doing problems daily is like exercising your brain, and trying to absorb all the material for this course in the week before the exam is like trying to prepare for the Olympics by working out 18 hours a day for a week.
Many of the homework problems will be rather long. Often you will look at a problem and not know what to do right away. This may be unnerving for some of you who have generally found mathematics easy up to now. Once you get past the first quarter or two of calculus, most new mathematical ideas will require a period of adjustment during which you feel as if you just don't understand what's going on. Don't be discouraged: this experience can be frustrating, but it can also bring much deeper rewards when you do understand. One of the things this course will try to help you learn is how to approach a complicated multi-step problem by breaking it down into its component steps and solving it step by step.
Since this is a 5-credit course, and the University's expectation is that each credit represents three hours per week of student effort on the average, the workload for this course is designed under the assumption that you will spend an average total of 15 hours per week on this course. This means that most of you will have to spend an average of two hours outside of class on this course, every day, five days a week. On some days, some of you will have to spend considerably more than two hours.
Because of budget limitations, only two problems will be graded on each homework assignment; when you turn in the homework you won't know which two they will be. Each homework set is worth 4 points, and will be graded as follows. The grader will give each of the two selected problems a score of 0, 1, or 2, as follows: