Course Material for Elementary Number Theory, 110.304, Spring 2017

Professor: W Stephen Wilson, Krieger 421, wsw@math.jhu.edu

Textbook: Number Theory, George E. Andrews.
ISBN-13: 978-0-486-68252-5
ISBN-10: 0-486-68252-8

Class meets Tuesday and Thursday 9-10:15, in Gillman 55.

Attention

Linear Algebra is a pre-requisite for this course.

However, the engineering Linear Algebra/Differential Equation course should do.

A number of students were advised to take this course instead of Honors Linear Algebra because there was some issue that bothered people. That problem has been fixed. If you have not had one of the linear algebra courses, then you are not allowed to take this number theory course.

Office hours are Tuesday, 11:45-12:45. However, the way they work is I'll be there for the first 15 minutes, and if no one comes, I'll feel free to leave unless someone has emailed me and told me they are coming but won't be there in the first 15 minutes.

In addition, you should all know about the math department help room that is open nearly all day and most evenings during the week. It is in Krieger 213.

Your TA is Xiaoqi Huang, who staffs the help room 3-5 on Tuesdays. He also has office hours 3-4 on Wednesday.

Students in this course are assumed to be serious math majors and will be treated as such.

Homework

You can work with others on the homework, but you should do your own writeup. Only 3 problems will be graded, but you don't know which 3.

How the course works.

Tuesday

Ignoring the first Tuesday where nothing much gets done, Tuesdays are the day you hand in your homework. You also get to take a test at the start of class. It will probably consist of 2 problems, one that was on the homework, and one that is from the book (or somewhere else if I can't find anything suitable), but not assigned as homework. The rest of Tuesday you will be assigned to groups to work on problems from the book.

Thursday

On Thursday, we start with a quiz to see if you have read the required material. Then I'll probably give a sort of overview lecture on the material. Depending on how things go, we might well do group work Thursday as well.

Timeline

The reading assignments are posted below. You will be quizzed on the reading on Thursday. Thursday, I will post the homework, due on that reading the next Tuesday. The test that Tuesday will be on that material, as will the in-class group work.

Grades

Grades will be figured in 2 ways.

First. 25% homework, 25% Thursday quizzes, 25% Tuesday tests, 25% Tuesday in-class group work.

Second. At the end of the semester I will run grades again after deleting the first 3 weeks. This lets me not penalize someone who got a slow start learning to prove things.