MATH 5397 ABSTRACT ALGEBRA

MATH 5330 ABSTRACT ALGEBRA (ONLINE)

Updated, January 15, 2008

This course is meant for students who wish to pursue a Master of Arts in Mathematics (MAM). Please contact me in order to find out whether this course is suitable for you and/or your degree plan.
Notice that this course cannot be used for MATH 3330, Abstract Algebra. For a variety of reasons, Undergraduate Students cannot take this course or any other course within the MAM program.
For further info about MAM, please visit
http://www.math.uh.edu/
and follow the link to MAM.

Book: Abstract Algebra , A First Course by Dan Saracino. Waveland Press, Inc. ISBN 0-88133-665-3
This is a short, one-semester textbook on Groups, Rings and Fields.

Organization of the course: You will receive weekly reading assignments together with homework. For most sections, I will add some comments. They are meant to add a graduate course perspective. All homework has to be submitted by e-mail, as a ScientificNotebook (SN) or LaTeX file .

Tests: I plan to give two tests and the final

Grading: Tests 40%, Final 40%, Homework 20%

Taking tests off-campus:
UH DE request that students provide at least three institutions near them. In turn, UH DE will contact those institutions and confirm if they have proctoring services and gather any other important details students need.
DE students wishing to have their exams proctored must contact
Jeff Bauml
by e-mail
jbauml@uh.edu
or by phone:
713-743-3993

However, if possible you should take tests on campus. Online graduate courses are not meant to save you time and gasoline. Living in nearby cities, like Katy, Humble, Sugarland or the Woodlands should not be a reason to take tests off campus. If you have to take the tests off campus, then certain WebCT Testing Center Policies must be obeyed:

1. Introduce yourself to the proctor and be prepared to show a valid photo id.
2. Once you have started a test, you cannot leave the testing room for any reason. If you decide to leave the testing room, you have to turn in your test, and the proctor should not allow you to continue the test.
3. You should take a test at the scheduled day. If this is impossible, then you have to ask me for permission to take it a couple of days earlier or later.

A student who wishes to take a test off campus, has to provide me at least one week ahead of time with the necessary information how to contact the proctor/testing center. I prefer to send tests by e-mail as a PDF file attachment.
You must make sure that the proctor returns your test by FAX within one workday.

The file format for submitting homework must be LaTeX. In order for doing so, you will need

ScientificNotebook (SN): This program is available for $99 through MacKichan Software at http://www.mackichan.com/

You should download and save the assignments on your local drive and open with Scientific Notebook.
All homework has to be submitted by e-mail to
klaus@math.uh.edu
as a Scientific Notebook (SN) attachment. Do not use any of my other e-mail accounts!

I do not have a WEB CT account. Thus you must submit your HW to my regular e-mail account, that is to klaus@math.uh.edu.

Your e-mail message should have the subject field completed like

Subject: John Smith, HW 1, sect. 0-3

and as file name choose Smith_HW1

Homework has to be submitted by the deadline. I do not accept late homework. Always submit what you got, and on time.
If you have problems, feel free to contact me by e-mail. Always include your name in the subject field. We can also meet in my office, PGH 607. Just make an appointment.

Your HW file will be returned with comments and correction marks.

Comments on Scientific Notebook:

SN is a rather simple word processor meant for text entry together with math. Files are saved in LaTeX but for SN you don't need to know any LaTeX. With SN you can also perform all sorts of mathematical calculations through MuPad. This makes SN a reasonable buy at the price of a graphics calculator.

If you start a new document, say for Homework, then open SN and start typing.

If you go through the File-New routine, choose Blank Document. Never ever use "Homework with Instructions". Blank with Theorem Tags is like Blank if you ignore theorem tags. For HW, theorem tags are overkill.

Of course, if you have already access to LaTeX then you don't need SN. However, then you have to know some LaTeX. But even if you have access to a TeX implementation, I still recommend SN for students as a very convenient front-end for LaTeX.

However, I don't recommend buying one of the "upgrades" of SN, namely Scientific Word (SW) or Scientific Workplace (SP). If for some reason you wish to get a full TeX program, there are better choices. SW as well as SWP offer only limited compatibility with LaTeX.

Why don't we use MS Word with the Equation Editor: Because this is an awful combination and sooner or later I would be forced to accept handwritten HW. It just would take you too long to get any math typed. And there are many other reasons why we should not use Word for documents that contain mathematical formulas.

Can I use SN for my other math courses? Yes. SN provides you with decent looking hardcopies. But even if your instructor accepts HW as e-mail attachments, SN files can be opened by LaTeX which is available to every faculty.

Can I save my HW as a PDF file? Yes, but only if you have the Adobe Acrobat , or equivalent. Just choose "Print" and then ADOBE PDF. UH Students can buy the Adobe Acrobat Professional for $69 at the Cougar Byte store. You can no longer buy software at the old location in PGH.