MATH 131 - Mathematical Concepts - Calculus

CATALOG DESCRIPTION: See catalog description here

MATH 131 is a one semester (usually terminal) calculus course for students not requiring the technical details of the engineering calculus sequence (MATH 151, 152, 253) or the theoretical emphasis of the sequence taken by mathematics majors (MATH 171, 172, 221). Instead an intuitive knowledge of calculus is developed and applied to a restricted class of functions and to simple (but hopefully interesting) models using these functions.

MATH 131 differs from MATH 142 in its reduced emphasis on business applications and in its use of trigonometric functions. (MATH 142 replaces the trigonometric functions with sections on partial derivatives and their use.)

The approach taken in MATH 131 yields some benefits as well as problems. New ideas come rapidly and one must construct convincing arguments appealing to geometric intuition (rather than rigorous proofs). Only elementary properties of polynomials, logarithms, exponentials and trigonometric functions are studied. As this material is encountered many intrinsically interesting applications from biology, business, ecology, social sciences, etc. are presented and serve to motivate the calculus. Often to make an application understandable one must spend a fair proportion of time explaining the parts of the model which are not calculus.

TO THE INSTRUCTOR: This course has some special problems. As there is no teaching assistant, the faculty member is responsible for all teacher-student contact. The students ask for review sessions before tests and indeed many attend. Making students keep up with lectures is hard when there is no personal contact. Either homework or weekly quizzes should be assigned to encourage students to keep up with lessons. Be aware that the background of these students vary considerably.