Math 220 Homepage, Autumn 2012

Partial Differential Equations of Applied Mathematics

Instructor: András Vasy

Office: 383M

Phone: 723-2226

E-mail: andras "at" math.stanford.edu

Office hours: Tentative office hours for the first week: Tuesday 2:15-3:45, Friday 2-3:30. Week 2-3: M 1-2, T 3:30-4:30, F 11-12.

Week 4 onwards (except Mon, November 12, and Wed, December 5): M 1-2, T 3:30-4:30, W 10:30-11:30.

Office hour on Wednesday, December 5, 10:30-11:30 is moved to 9:30-10:30. Extra office hours during the last week of classes: Wednesday, December 5, 1-2pm and Thursday, December 6, 3:30-4:30pm.

NEW Class location: TTh 9:30-10:45am, Herrin T175.

Course assistant: Fayadhoi Ibrahima.

E-mail: fibrahim "at" stanford.edu

Office hours:

Textbook: due to the availability of lecture notes, the following are all `recommended'.

The running syllabus is here.

Grading policy: The grade will be based on the weekly homework (25%), on the in-class midterm exam (30%) and on the in-class (i.e. not take-home, to take place during finals week, as designated by the registrar) final exam (45%).

The homework will be due in class or in the instructor's mailbox by 9pm on the designated day, which will usually (but not always) be Thursdays. You are allowed to discuss the homework with others in the class, but you must write up your homework solution by yourself. Thus, you should understand the solution, and be able to reproduce it yourself. This ensures that, apart from satisfying a requirement for this class, you can solve the similar problems that are likely to arise on the exams.

The registrar has now confirmed that the final exam will be on Monday, December 10, 12:15-3:15pm in Herrin T175.

The exam has been graded!

The mean for the exam was 151 points out of 200; the median was 157.5. There is no grade for the final -- the course grade, as described above, has a number of components, and it is the actual scores that count. To give you an idea what your score corresponds to, i.e. what your course grade might be if you do similarly on the midterm and on the homeworks (similarly does not mean that you have a similar percentage of the maximum score, e.g. on the homeworks the expectations are much higher since you have a lot more time to do them and since you can talk to others), here are some rough ranges:

The exam is 3 hours, and covers all the material from the course, with some emphasis of the material since the midterm, including the Fourier transform. Please see the syllabus for details of what was covered after the midterm. Please arrive a few minutes early (so by 12:10) so that we can start on time. You will be asked to write the first problems (whose number will be specified) in blue book no. 1, the rest in blue book no. 2, to facilitate the grading. The exam is closed book, notes, computers, etc.

To prepare for the exam, first read through the lecture notes, then go through the problem sets, and finally attempt the practice exam (which was an actual exam in 2009).

There is a practice final with solutions. Please let me know about any issues about the practice solutions as they were not carefully proofread (the current version is the update from December 6).

The midterm is on Thursday, November 1, in class!

Solutions are available.

The exam has been graded!

There was a rather broad distribution of scores. The mean was 74 points out of 100; the median was 81. There is no grade for the midterm -- the course grade, as described above, has a number of components, and it is the actual scores that count. To give you an idea what your score corresponds to, i.e. what your course grade might be if you do similarly on the final and on the homeworks (similarly does not mean that you have a similar percentage of the maximum score, e.g. on the homeworks the expectations are much higher since you have a lot more time to do them and since you can talk to others), here are some rough ranges:

The exam is 75 minutes, and covers the material through the first Fourier transform handout and Problem Set 5 (inclusive). Please arrive a few minutes early (so by 9:25) so that we can start on time. You will be asked to write the first two problems in blue book no. 1, the rest in blue book no. 2, to facilitate the grading. The exam is closed book, notes, computers, etc.

To prepare for the exam, first read through the lecture notes, then go through the problem sets, and finally attempt the practice exam (which was an actual exam in 2009).

There will be five problems on the exam. You will be asked to do the first three, as well as one of Problems 4 and 5 (i.e. you will have a choice).

There is a practice midterm with solutions.

Lecture Notes

Below are preliminary versions of the lecture notes, from the version taught in 2009, which will be revised as the course progresses.

Problem Sets