Robert B. Kusner

Director of the Center

(This page is like a cathedral: always under reconstruction ;-)

Kusner's Math Classes

About the photo: Rob's hair is now a little greyer -- and a little shorter -- in part because he was elected to the Amherst Select Board in 2005 (having also led a concerted and ultimately successful effort to preserve Amherst Town Meeting :-)!

Speaking of photos: here's a link to Rob's class photos.

Current

This spring Rob is teaching honors Differential Geometry of Curves & Surfaces (Math 563H). Here is the (quick-loading, even on a slow connection) ASCII file for Math 563H (Curves and Surfaces) topics & problems .

Rob is also serving as course chair for, and teaching both (a double) section 4 and (a single) section 7 of Introduction to Linear Algebra (Math 235). Here is the (again, ASCII) Math 235 (Linear Algebra) homework schedule for Rob's sections.

Here's a link to Math 235 WeBWorK.

As in the past, instructors will follow these Math 235 (Linear Algebra) common guidelines.

NEWSFLASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WebWorK is going to be working soon!

For you hardcore linear algebraists: the usual multiplication algorithm has complexity O(n^3) for n x n matrices; here's a recent paper on the latest complexity bound: O(n^2.3726...)! (Conjecture: O(n^2) is best.)

Math 235 exam and review info:

[Please continue to watch here for important developments and announcements!]

And here (temporarily) is a link to last fall's Math 235 WeBWorK.

Recent

Last fall (2011) Rob taught (a double) section 2 of Introduction to Linear Algebra (Math 235), with links to:

Fall 2011 Math 235 (Linear Algebra) homework schedule

Fall 2011 Math 235 Practice Final Problems

Scanned pages of Fall Math 235 Common Midterm Solutions (find the sign error)!

Fall 2011 Math 235 Practice Midterm Problems.

Last spring (2011) Rob taught the computational linear algebra (Math313/513-CS513) course while on sabbatical at Penn, and last fall he taught -- you guessed it! -- Introduction to Linear Algebra (Math 235) at UMass....

During spring 2010, Rob taught honors Differential Geometry of Curves & Surfaces (Math 563H) and a double section of Linear Algebra (Math 235). Here is the ASCII file for Math 563H (Curves and Surfaces) topics & problems . (Andrew Reiter and Nicky Reyes are helping to TeX these now, so please stay tuned!)

Because he was the course chair during a semester when all the other instructors were graduate students, he and the other instructors established the following Math 235 (Linear Algebra) common guidelines, which may be useful to future course chairs.

Here's a link to the Fall 2009 Math 235 Practice Midterm and to sketches of answers! Here's a link to Fall 2009 Math 235 Midterm Answers. And here is a link to last year's Math 235 Practice Midterm. Finally, here's the Fall 2009 Math 235 practice final , along with Peter Norman's handwritten answers , a link to an old Math 235 practice final and links to older Math 235 practice finals or even older Math 235 practice finals, including one similar to our practice final with answers ....

Here are some Quick and Dirty Differential Equations notes prepared by Peter Norman last fall (with a little help from me) for use in Math 235.

Older

During Spring 2009, Rob taught a special version of Math 462 (Geometry and the Imagination) - please visit here for the Math 462 topics and comments! He also taught a (double) section of Math 235 (Linear Algebra).

In Fall 2008, Rob taught a double-section of Math 235 (Linear Algebra).

Rob was on sabbatical in Spring 2008, but he taught back-to-back sections of Math 235 in Fall 2007 -- Linear Algebra is one of his favorite and most popular classes!

In Spring 2007 Rob taught Math 425 (Advanced Calculus) and a section of Math 235 (Linear Algebra). Here are links to the Math 425 (Advanced Calculus) homework schedule. Also, please have a look at my colleague Roman Federov's problems for enrichment and review. Rob organized the undergraduate TAP seminar (Math 191) during the Fall 2006 semester. It met in GANG (LGRT 1535) at lunchtime most Mondays and some Wednesdays. The following people kindly contributed to the 2006 TAP Topics. Many thanks to all of you!

In academic year 2006-07 Rob again planned to teach a two-semester course on Manifolds (Math 703-4) for graduate students. Due to unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances, Rob was not be able to offer Math 704 in the spring. But here is where to find homework problems and informal notes for that course: Manifolds I (703) and Manifolds II (704), along with older notes from Fall 2002 (703), Spring 2003 (704) and Spring 2000 (Math 704).

In the Spring 2006 semester Rob taught Advanced Linear Algebra (Math 545) ; here are the updated problems/notes for this course. (Please compare with Rob's Spring 2002 advanced linear algebra problems/notes.) Rob also pinch-hit all semester for Ordinary Differential Equations (Math 331) in Spring 2006; here is the Math 331 general topics list and the Math 331 homework schedule for Rob's section. (This was an ambitious syllabus, covering more than the other sections did, and not without some ill-tempered jeers from the bleachers in the final innings -- it didn't help that Select Board meetings went on till after midnight on many, many occasions before this early morning course ;) In the Fall 2005 semester Rob taught Introduction to Abstract Algebra (Math 411); here are the notes and homework schedule .

In the Spring 2005 semester Rob was teaching an experimental version of Geometry and the Imagination. This was a very popular course, and Rob hopes to have the opportunity to offer it again soon, perhaps in conjunction with Math 563 (Differential Geometry of Curves and Surfaces)!

Rob was on sabbatical for 2003-04. During academic year 2002-03 Rob taught a two-semester course on Manifolds (Math 703-4) for graduate students. Here is where to find homework problems and notes from that course: Manifolds I (703) and Manifolds II (704), along with older notes from my Spring 2000 Math 704.

Rob has taught the basic graduate topology course several times, most recently in Fall 2000, Click here for the postscript or the rawtext version of the final Topology exam for Fall 2000.
And since this is Greek to me, here's a link to symbols like ε.

More

Watch here for further developments.




Address

        1435G Lederle Graduate Research Tower
        Department of Mathematics
        University of Massachusetts at Amherst
        Amherst MA 01003
        USA
   

Phone 413 545 6022

Secretary 413 545 2812

Fax 413 545 1801

Electronic Mail kusner@math.umass.edu



All material on this website is Copyleft* by Rob Kusner.


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