18.100Q Class Home

18.100Q Real Analysis

Fall 2019

Instructor: Yiming Zhao

Recitations/Communications: Tim Large, Susan Ruff

Lecture: MWF12 (2-132)
Recitation: TH 2 (2-132)
Yiming's office hour: W 5-6 or by appointment (2-232C)
Tim's office hour: T 3-4 or by appointment (2-334)
Susan's office hour: T 1:20-2:30 (2-370)

Information:

This is the webpage for 18.100Q (Communications Intensive Real Analysis) for Fall 2019. Here you can find the Syllabus, weekly homework assignments and some resources on writing/communicating mathematics.

Announcements

Writing Assignment 1 posted

Writing Assignment 1 is now posted.

Announced on 05 September 2019 8:27 p.m. by Yiming Zhao

About lecture notes

It was great meeting all of you today!

Some of you asked me to post online the relevant pages in Rudin's textbook that we talked about today. I generally follow Rudin's textbook quite closely. But Rudin's book is so comprehensive that I have to skip some of the material to fit it into the limited time we meet each week. As a result, posting the page numbers might be a harder task for me.

As an alternative, I will post my lecture notes after each class. This way, you will have a reference to what we discussed in each lecture. But, do take your own notes as I don't promise the set of materials covered in my lecture notes is exactly the same as the set of the contents I delivered in the classroom.

I am also going to apologize in advance for the many typos and potentially a few math mistakes that are bound to appear in these notes. (They have never been proofread.) Try to read them with a critical mind---as you should when you are reading anything. On the writing side, please also look for examples of good writing and bad writing in these notes. Feel free to discuss them with Susan, Tim or me.

Lecture notes 1 has already been posted. You can find it under "materials".

Announced on 04 September 2019 1:50 p.m. by Yiming Zhao

Getting started with LaTeX---info on pset 0!

Welcome to 18.100Q! Our first day of the class is going to be Wednesday September 4th at 12pm. I am excited to meet everyone!

18.100Q is a communication-intensive course. That means, in addition to learn the core material (real analysis), we are also going to learn how to communicate math (both in writing and in speaking) effectively.

LaTeX is a typesetting computer program that is widely used by almost everyone in the math community. Your assignments in this course, particularly the three writing assignments, will need to be delivered in PDFs created by LaTeX. (As a matter of fact, once you are familiar with LaTeX, writing in LaTex is actually going to be easier, faster and more editable than writing by hand.)

For this reason, there is a pset 0 due this Sunday (Sep. 8) at 10pm where you are asked to use LaTeX to reproduce the *exact* same content (but use your own name) in a PDF given to you. You should submit both the reproduced PDF and the .tex file on Stellar.

To help you with that assignment, I've created a topic called "Getting started with LaTeX" in the "Materials" link. Under this topic, you will find the following resources

1. "Introduction to LaTeX.pdf": 2 pages long. In this PDF, you will get an idea what LaTeX is all about and what a .tex file looks like.

2. There are many YouTube videos that tell you how to get LaTeX up and running in different operating systems. For windows, you might want to check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPnfHRE_W_g ; for MacOS, you might want to check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeeLtx_VcuI (You might also want to consider TexMaker as your LaTeX editor, instead of TexStudio as suggested by the video.)

3. "short-math-guide.pdf": 17 pages long. This is slightly longer, but is quite comprehensive.

4. a link: http://mathcomm.org/general-principles-of-communicating-math/latex/ There are many resources/information on using LaTeX here.

5. MOST IMPORTANTLY: a .tex template. You should try to compile this file and get the output PDF first. After that, please try to make changes to this template to finish pset 0.

I will host an additional office hour on Friday, 09/06 from 1pm to 2pm (which is right after the lecture) to answer any questions with LaTeX. (You will need to use LaTeX starting from the very first assignment!)

Although pset 0 is due on Sunday, please try to get this started as soon as possible. At the very least, try to get the LaTeX program up and running before the Friday, so that you can come to my office hour if you encountered any problems.

Announced on 03 September 2019 9:34 p.m. by Yiming Zhao