Course Material for Elementary Number Theory, 110.304, Spring 2022

Professor: W Stephen Wilson, Krieger 421, wwilson3@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 Krieger 300.

Major Changes!
The first 2 weeks of the course will be on line, thanks to omicron. This shouldn't be a problem for us. I was teaching this course the spring of 2020 when the virus shut us down and we had to go on-line. It worked well. We do lots of group work and zoom has breakout rooms that work great for that.
Here is the link for the Tuesday classes. If it is requested, the password is NT.
If, for some reason (gasp), this doesn't work when it is supposed to, I will immediately send out another link. Not much will happen the first day of classes anyway, so we have time to get this all to work.
Here is the link for the Thursday classes. If it is requested, the password is NT.
Because of this change of format, you will have to be able to use an app on your phone, ipad, computer, etc, to scan or photograph your daily quiz and test. You will email it to me immediately. As for your homework on the one Tuesday during this 2 week period that it is due, you will scan and email it to our TA. Similarly the group work.
If you have questions, email them to me so I can get answers to everyone.

I will not be using BLACKBOARD or its replacement for this course. I will give feedback in class and assignments will be here on this website.

Linear Algebra is a pre-requisite for this course. However, the engineering Linear Algebra/Differential Equation course should do. The truth is, that although linear algebra is a pre-requisite, the real issue is mathematical maturity, so if you know some linear algebra and are ready for a proof based course, that's okay. This course is one of the options for algebra for math majors, so, students in this course are assumed to be math majors and will be treated as such. However, this course does not assume you have taken a proof based course before. So, it qualifies as an introduction to proofs course.

Office hours are basically whenever you want to talk with me. The best time is to catch me at the end of class. If you can't meet right then, we'll agree on a time. If you don't catch me right after class, just email me and we'll set something up. I like to talk math, so we can always work something out.

Your TA is Luqiao Xu, lxu46@jhu.edu.

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 seems that this will be on-line this semester. When I get the schedule, I'll let you know.

More Help

Here is a page of useful supportive materials for the course, things like how to study math etc.

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. I'll probably give a short overview lecture of the material you are to read for Thursday. 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. We will do group work Thursday as well.

Timeline

The reading assignments are posted below. You will be quizzed on the reading on Thursday. Thursday or before, 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 several ways.

First. 25% homework, 25% Thursday quizzes, 25% Tuesday tests, 25% in-class group work. This is the base line for grades.

Second. At the end of the semester I will run grades again after deleting the first 2 weeks, deleting the group work, and deleting both of those. This lets me not penalize someone who got a slow start learning to prove things or who gets randomly stuck with duds in group work for a whole semester.