Instructor: A.J. Hildebrand, office 241 Illini Hall (second floor, north end of hallway), phone 244-7721, email ajh@uiuc.edu.
Office hours: MWF after class or 1:15 - 2 in my office, 241 Illini Hall. You are encouraged to contact me by email; I read my email frequently and you'll usually get a reply within an hour or two.
Text and Syllabus: J. Pitman, Probability, Springer-Verlag, 1999. The course covers Chapters 1 - 4 (except for the sections marked as optional), and selected topics from Chapters 5 and 6. Occasionally, I will distribute additional handouts to supplement this text.
Homework: There will be approximately 10 HW assignments, normally given out on Monday and due in class the following Friday. The first assignment will be given out on Monday, January 27, and is due Friday, January 31. Assignments dropped off in mailboxes will not be accepted, but if you cannot attend class on Friday, you can drop off the assignment in my office, 241 Illini Hall, any time before the class hour the assignment is due. (I am usually in most of the day; if I am not in, just slip the paper under the office door.) Late assignments will not be accepted; if you have a legitimate excuse for missing an assignment (e.g., illness), with proper documentation, I will mark the assignment as excused. An excused assignment will not be counted towards your homework average; by contrast, a missed assignment without a valid excuse will count as 0 points. From each assignment, approximately half of the problems will be graded. At the end of the semester, the lowest HW score will be dropped and the remaining scores determine your HW grade.
Extracredit project: There will be an opportunity in the second half of the semester to do a project to earn some extra credit. The amount of extra credit depends on the size and difficulty of the project, and the quality of the work done. The maximal amount will be roughly equivalent to a full letter grade improvement in an hour exam, or to three additional dropped hw homework scores. Details, along with a list of possible projects, will be announced later.
Hour Exams: There will be three Hour Exams, given during the regular class hour, spaced evenly over the semester, and tentatively scheduled as follows:
Final Exam: The Final Exam will be cumulative and about twice as long as an Hour Exam. It will be given in the regular class room at the officially scheduled exam slot: Thursday, May 15, 8 - 11 am. (See the Spring 2003 Final Examination Schedule.)
Grading Policy: The course grade will be derived from the following components:
Calculator policy: While a few of the HW problems may require the use of a basic calculator, exam problems will be constructed such that calculators are not needed and would provide no benefit (and, in fact, may be a distraction). Therefore calculators are not allowed in exams.
Missed exam policy: I do not give make-up exams. If you miss an hour exam and have a valid excuse, I will mark the exam as excused; the exam will then not be taken into account when computing the overall exam average. (By contrast, a missed exam with no valid excuse counts as 0 points.) Valid excuses include illness, an out-of-town job interview, a field trip in connection with a University class, etc.
Graduate students: Graduate students have the option to register for 1 unit instead of the usual 0.75 units of credit. According to the timetable, in order to earn 1 unit of credit, "additional work of substance" is required. If you are a graduate student and wish to use this option, get in touch with me. I will assign the required extra work in the latter part of the semester in the form of additional homework problems or projects.
Course Web Page: The web page for this course is http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~hildebr/361. You should bookmark this page and visit it on a regular basis. On this web page you will find: