Homework

• There will be weekly homework for which collaboration amongst the students is allowed (even encouraged), although, as usual, solutions to homework problems must be the student's own work. Click on the homework link in the sidebar to access the homework.
  
  
• Homework will be due each Friday by 5pm.
  
  
• Each student may hand in at most one homework late (no more than 5 days). Students can also be forgiven for one homework set---in other words, the lowest homework score will be deleted.

Exams

• There will be a take-home midterm and a final exam. Collaboration on the exams is not allowed.

Class participation

• Weekly discussion sessions will be held in which students present solutions to selected howework problems on the board to other class members, guided by the TA. Each session, 3 problems will be presented and each solution will be scribed by one other classmate. Full credit will be awarded if students participate in at least 4 sessions, complete at least 1 problem on the board, and scribe at least one solution. The three problems will be made known in each homework. This scribe is responsible for taking notes, and writing up the solution in LaTeX.
  
  
• The recitation discussions will be held on each Thursday from 4-5pm in Room 214 Steele.

Grading

• The homework will count for roughly 35% of the grade, the midterm 20% and the final exam 35% and class participation 10%.

Textbooks

• We will use a combination of the instructor's own class notes and for some topics and homework, the book of Perko: Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems. Some other books that may be useful for alternative perspectives are
  
  • Hirsch, Smale, Devany, Differential Equations, Dynamical Systems and an Introduction to Chaos
  • Ferdinand Verhulst, Nonlinear Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems, Second Edition.
  • Hassan Khalil, Nonlinear Systems, Third Edition.
  • Shankar Sastry, Nonlinear Systems.
  • Steven Strogatz, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos
  • Stephen Wiggins, Introduction to Applied Nonlinear Dynamical Systems and Chaos, Second Edition.