Foundations of Engineering: Multivariable Calculus

Description of Course Goals and Curriculum

This class was built to teach multivariable calculus from an engineering point of view. It covers mostly the same things as the MAT equivalent, but it does take more time covering areas in engineering where these concepts pop up. Creativity in applying concepts to engineering problems is emphasized over rote memorization.

Learning From Classroom Instruction

• Lecture
  • Since the course isn’t being directly taught out of a textbook, lectures are really important since what’s taught isn’t necessarily in the book, and vice versa. The examples that Kasdin gave sometimes found themselves into problem sets, so it would definitely be helpful to pay extra attention to those.
  • The Lectures do follow a set of notes that the professor wrote, so if you miss something or can’t remember an example, it might be nice to review the notes. However, the notes can be sparse in some areas and might miss some explanations that were present in lecture, so they’re not a substitute for lecture.
• Precept
  • Precepts in this course vary in purpose from week to week with some providing hints for the problem sets, others reviewing concepts from lecture, and some even teaching materials skipped in lecture.
  • If you want to completely understand the material, going to precept would be helpful, but it might not be necessary to go each time depending on how you’re doing with the course or problem set.

Learning For and From Assignments

• Problem Sets
  • Problem Sets were divided into two parts: skills questions and application questions. The skills questions are your standard computational questions that you would find in the textbook and likely have done extensively before. The application questions are a little different and describe a problem in engineering. These questions are essentially fancy word problems but can require thinking a little more creatively, remembering material taught in previous classes, and occasionally some clarification.
  • Having a good group to work with and going to office hours can be especially useful in this class to work through some of the harder questions. Since exams are open book, having clearly worked out problem set questions can be really helpful.
• Exams
  • There were two midterms and a final, all being open book. The exams were formatted essentially like a longer problem set with a mix of skills and applications questions.
  • However, unlike the homework, the skills questions aren’t from the textbook. Doing well on these questions mostly boils down to getting to know the professor’s problem style with the in-class examples and the applications questions on the problem sets.

External Resources

• Office Hours
  • Office hours were definitely very helpful. For questions that require more elaboration or follow ups, the preceptors and professor were really good with helping people understand.
• Piazza
  • The professor this semester also used Piazza. For more administrative questions or simple clarification questions, answers were really responsive.

What Students Should Know About This Course For Purposes Of Course Selection

This class is considered equivalent to MAT 201, but unlike the usual MAT sequence for engineers, it’s supposed to be taken after EGR 156 (Linear Algebra). However, it is possible to take both at the same time with a little more work. If you’re already on the EGR 150 track, it would make sense to take this course as a continuation of that track due to the way this class builds on some of the concepts learned in linear algebra. If not, reviewing or learning linear algebra during or before this class would definitely be useful.