Course Information

ICS 6N
Computational Linear Algebra

Fall 2013

Instructor

Prof. Sandy Irani
Office: DBH 4042
Office Hours: Thurs. 1:00PM-2:00PM
Email: irani@ics.uci.edu

Teaching Assistants

Ekin Oguz
Office: ICS 468A
Office Hours: Mon. 2:00PM-3:00PM
Email: eoguz@uci.edu

Mengfan Tang
Office: DBH 3211
Office Hours: Tues. 2:00-3:00PM
Email: mengfant@uci.edu

Reader

Yen Thi Hai Hoang
Office: 2069 DBH
Office Hours: Wed 12:00PM-1:00PM
Email: yentin3@gmail.com

Meeting Places and Times

Lecture will be held MWF 11:00-11:50 in ICS 174. You are responsible for anything said in class, including class announcements. If you have to miss lecture for any reason, please ask one of your classmates to fill you in on what you missed.

There are four lab sections for this class. Each section meets one hour per week on Friday. This is an important time to get questions answered about homework problems and labs. Some lab time will be spent walking you through features of Matlab that you will need for your lab assignments.Lab time is the best time for troubleshooting issues that come up with Matlab or lab assignments.

Obtaining Assistance

The best way to get your questions answered is by coming to lecture, office hours or lab and asking them there. In general, if I'm not busy with something else, I am happy to answer short questions while I am in my office, so feel free to stop by during other times in the week.

All email with questions about course material should be sent to the following email address: ics6n-questions@ics.uci.edu. This is an alias for the instructor and the TAs. It ensures that we both see your message and the response. It also gives you better turnaround time.

  • Please also include the following information:

    For questions about grading, please email the person who graded the assignment. Better yet, attend that person's office hours. All homework will be graded by Yen. All quizes will be graded by me. Labs will be graded by one of the two TAs.

    Course Announcements

    Assignments

    There are weekly written homework questions every week from the text. These are due the Wednesday after they are covered in lecture. See the assigned problems and due dates in the course schedule.

    There are four lab assignments due over the course of the quarter. These are also due on Wednesdays. All of the labs will require some programming in Matlab. The lab assignments and material presented in lab section should provide all the information you need to know in order to complete the lab assignments. In addition, there are many online tutorials available to you if you decide you need some additional help.

    Lab assignements will consist of performing some Matlab instructions as well as written work. The results of all the questions should be copied into a Word file. You will hand in a written copy of the word file. You can use a different editor than Word if you prefer, but it will need to enable copying pictures and graphs.

    You do not have to purchase a copy of Matlab for your own machine. If you attend lab regularly, you will likely be able to complete much of your lab work in class. In addition to scheduled lab time for this class, you can drop in on any of the following labs to have access to a computer with Matlab. If the room is being used by an instructor as part of their schedule lab time, you can ask them if you can use one of the computers during their class.

    Weekly quizes: I will give a very short weekly quiz at the beginning of class every Friday, starting in week 3. Since Nov 29 is a holiday, we will have a quiz the following Monday, Dec 2, instead. There will be a total of 8 quizes. The quizes will last approximately 10 minutes and will be given out at the beginning of lecture. They will cover material from two weeks prior. That way you have a chance to practice topics in homework exercises and get feedback before the quiz. In determining your course score, I will drop the lowest two quiz scores. However, these dropped scores are intended to cover any missed quizes for whatever reason you need to miss a quiz. This includes any medical problems, personal issues or school-related events.

    Grades for the assignements will be posted through EEE. I will grade the quizes, Yen will grade homework and the TAs will grade the lab assignments. If you have questions regarding grading, please see the person who graded that particular item.

    Text

    We have one required text for this course.

    Course Structure

    The grading criteria for the course is: Note that there is a tiny bit of credit given for completing the course evaluation towards the end of the quarter. It is available through EEE and is usually released a couple weeks from the end of the quarter. If enough students complete the evaluation then I have access to the list of students who completed the evaluation. However, I do not see any evaluation results until the quarter is over and grades have been turned in. Even after the quarter when I do see the evaluation results, they are completely anonymous. Thus, there is no risk to you in being completely honest in your evaluation. I take these evaluations very seriously and use them to improve my teaching.

    Missed Final Exam Policy

    The final exam will be on Friday, December 13, 8:00AM-10:00AM. (Friday the 13th!)

    Academic Honesty

    The Bren School of ICS and the University have already established an academic honesty policy. Read it.

    Violators of academic honesty policies are subject to the penalties described in the Bren School of ICS policy. They are also subject to an immediate course grade of F, and you will not be allowed to drop the course to avoid the grade. Also be aware that a single documented case of academic dishonesty may preclude you from switching into computing majors, registering for computing minors, joining the ICS Honors Program, and graduating from a computing major with honors.

    Guidelines to avoid plagarism:

    We expect that: