Self-introduction - Ana Rosa - Goals and Schedule
anartam
My name is Ana Rosa and I'm a brazilian legal teacher
interested in empirical legal research, meaning that I need to know
the maths behind some statitical methods and techniques. I graduated
in both Law and Business Administration and I took a calculus course
during my business school years. As far as I could understand, we're
forming some kind of support group and those knowing more will help
those facing some difficulty.
I was supposed to inform my goals, so let me do it. I
intend to start from some precalculus review, keep going to Calculus
and Linear Algebra. For six weeks, those are my specific goals:
Week 1
Reviewing Algebra I (I'm saying reviewing because I've
already studied all those topics, but need to refresh my memory a
litte bit). I'm going to cover those topics very quickly.
Book used: Algebra I, by Andrew Gloag and Anne Gloag
(it's a free source, everyone can download it)
Topics covered: Equations and functions; real numbers;
equations of lines, graphs of equations and functions, writing linear
equations, linear inequalities, systems of equations and inequalities,
exponential fuction.
Week 2
Reviewing Algebra I
Book used: Algebra I, by Andrew Gloag and Anne Gloag
Topics covered: Factoring polynomials, quadratic
equations and functions.
Week 3
Reviewing set theory and functions
Book used: Functions, by Sunil Kumar Singh
Topics covered: set theory, real function
Week 4
Reviewing functions
Book used: Functions, by Sunil Kumar Singh
Topics covered: trigonometric functions
Week 5
Reviewing Matrix, determinants and linear systems
Book used: some textbooks I have (in portuguese! sorry for
that)
Topics covered: Matrix, determinants and linear systems
Week 6
Introduction to calculus
Book used: Gilbert Strang, Calculus (and also some books I
have)
Topics covered: Derivatives
I also intend to use Strang's introduction to calculus
lectures, available on MIT OCW website and Khan Academy website.
Methodology: Read the theory and solve the problems.
Just like that. I intend to post the list of exercises I'm solving and
ask for help when I can not solve a problem.
By the way, are we going to use LaTeX to solve our
problems? If we are, I don't know how to use it. I was thinking we can
upload our exercises using google docs, for example, or our course
materials webpage. What do you think?
Ana Rosa
Joe Corneli
I loved the detailed outline! It's an ambitious plan, but at the
same time it seems like a good use of 6 weeks. One of my
instructors always said, don't get stuck, or you'll fall behind!
At the same time, everyone agrees that mastering the basics
is really important -- so I do hope you'll ask if you run into
any trouble...
Regarding your question about format:
> By the way, are we going to use LaTeX to solve our
> problems? If we are, I don't know how to use it. I was thinking we can
> upload our exercises using google docs, for example, or our course
> materials webpage. What do you think?
LaTeX is actually not too hard to learn, but at the same time don't
let learning it slow you down, and above all, don't let formatting
stuff slow you down doing the exercises :).
That said, I do intend to get some LaTeX-based tools and tutorials
ready for people to become familiar with if they like. I'm sorry this
isn't immediately ready however!
For the moment, uploading to the p2pu course page sounds good,
or feel free to simply post to the email list. Attachments should be
OK for most people, yes?
And on that note, here is a free editor for writing math that is actually
just LaTeX in disguise: http://www.lyx.org/ (but using it should be
super self-explanatory and easy!).
Joe