Welcome to your MAT 1575 OpenLab site! All course information will be posted here. Please take a look around.

Note that the assignments below are the ones that I am grading. However, there are many components of the course which I am not grading but which you should still do conscientiously. Remember a college course at this level of difficulty generally requires 2 hours of FOCUSED work for each hour of class, so you should put in at least 8 hours of work outside of class. This could include a careful reading of text (best done BEFORE the material is covered in class) and review of examples and problems done in previous sessions.

Daily, I will give you self-quizzes in class so that you have a realistic idea of how you are doing. Typically, these will be put on the board PRIOR to the beginning of class, so that those who arrive early can get started on them. It is suggested that you attempt them FIRST without looking at notes and the textbook. If you get stuck, spend 3 minutes thinking more about the problem.  If you are still unable to make progress, then you may look at your notes and examples to get you get to the next step of the problem.

First openlab post:

Your first assignment is to add yourself to our OpenLab course and to submit a post introducing yourself to the class. Your post is due by noon Saturday, September 1.

1. Sign up for an OpenLab account using your CityTech email address.
2. After you’ve logged in, add yourself to our MAT 1575 class.
3. From the class OpenLab site you can create a new post by clicking the symbol that looks like a + sign inside a circle at the top of the screen.
4. Title your post “Introducing [your first name] [your last name].” (You may use just initials if you like, as long as there’s enough information for me to locate you on my official roster.)
5. From the categories on the right-hand side of the screen, make sure to select “Introduce yourself” so that the rest of us can locate your post later.
6. Tell us anything you’d like us to know about you! Some suggestions are…
   • Your major
   • How you became interested in your major
   • Which math classes you’ll take after MAT 1575 (if you don’t know, you can check your program requirements in the college catalog here)
   • What you hope to do after you graduate from CityTech; short-term goals, long-term goals, whatever…
   • What you hope to get out of this course (I don’t mean which grade you want!)
   • Other interests/hobbies you have
7. Read and comment on at least one your classmates’ posts. (Note: the administrator will have to approve your comments, so don’t worry if they don’t appear right away.)

Webwork #1:

Your first Webwork assignment due by M 09/03/2018 at 11:59pm consists of four short sets:

• Review-PowerRule
• Review-ProductRule
• Review-QuotientRule
• Review-ChainRule

plus one long set: Antiderivatives.

To log into Webwork, follow this link.

• Your login name is your first initial + your last name. For example, if your name is Barack Obama, your login name is bobama. (If your last name has multiple words with a space or a hyphen between them, just use the first word unless it consists of 2 or fewer characters.) All letters are lower case.
• Your password is your CUNY ID number. Be sure to change it to something that is both more secure and something you will remember. However, if you do forget it, you can request me via email to reset it (I get one of these requests at least once each semester!).

Click on the homework set’s name to view the problems. Click on individual problems and enter your answer. After you have entered an answer, the system will tell you if it is correct. Make sure you have entered all your answers before the deadline. There is nothing else necessary for you to do after that with webwork (in blackboard you have to click the submit button!).

Here are some tips: WeBWorK guide.

My Introduction. I have been interested in math as a field of study since eighth grade when I got interested in geometric constructions using a compass and straightedge. After toying around with a major in physics, I finished undergraduate as a math major, taught at the secondary level in Nicaragua for a few years then went to graduate school in San Diego. My specialization became combinatorics also known as the art of counting and often seen in discrete math/computer science in the form of graph (or network) theory. My training was algebraic, which is a much more abstract form of combinatorics. I have only recently begun to study graph theory in depth. Many tools developed in calculus II, namely  series, are used heavily in combinatorics but in a more “formal” way. We think of series as an infinite clothesline and do not worry too much about convergence.

Finally, as far as hobbies, I like outdoor activities such as gardening, hiking, biking, swimming and cross-country (Nordic) skiing. I ride my bike from where I live in Harlem to work (usually just one direction) each day. I sing each evening of the week and also on weekends with different choirs, ranging from Sacred Renaissance, Baroque and early American to eastern European folk (Georgian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian). In the summers, I typically play a mellophone in the Bread and Puppet Band in Glover, Vermont.