MAT 126 Homework

You are encouraged to discuss homework problems with your fellow students. However, each student must write up the homework or complete the corresponding web-based homework individually!

Homework will be assigned weekly; check here for specific weekly assignments. Note that the odd-numbered (paper) problems have answers at the back of the textbook. You should solve these problems without recourse to the answer key, and should write the problem up carefully in your own words even if you have consulted the book for the final answer. Always show your work!

You will also complete part of the homework problems via a web interface provided by the publisher of the textbook. One of the benefits of the web-based system is that it will provide immediate feedback about whether your answers are right and wrong.

Web-based homework problems are much like the usual ones: you need to give answers to a series of short questions, some of them multiple-choice, others not. The only difference is that instead of doing it on paper, you are doing it over the Internet. You can access the web interface from any computer which has Internet connection, whether from home, from one of the University SINC sites, or say, from an Internet cafe in Bombay, Moscow, or Rome. No special software is required: all you need is a relatively recent Web browser. Also, you can do the web-based homework whenever you want (of course, before the deadline). You can look at the problems, or even print some of them, then go home, think them over, and come back later with your answer. In fact, this is perhaps the recommended way of doing the web-based homework.

Each problem has many variants, and different students are given different variants. So do not try to compare your answers to that of your classmates.

The web-based assignments are set up so you can do "unlimited retakes", which means you can work on the assignment for a while, then leave and come back later. For this you will need to click on the Save Progress button; do NOT click on the End Assignment button before you are ready to submit your homework. There is NO way to edit your answers after clicking on End Assignment.

Warning: If you do not click Save Progress before logging out or closing your browser window, the program may end the assignment for you due to (long) inactivity (say more than 10-15 minutes). Thus it is very important to click Save Progress if you wish to come back to the assignment at a later time.

If you submit an answer and get it wrong, you get another try. You have 3 tries; after the third incorrect answer, the problem will be permanently marked "incorrect".

Registration and logging in:

Before you can use the web-based homework web site, you will need to register for the system and choose your user name and password (this is separate from registering for the course!). To do so, please follow the instructions below.

If you don't have a computer, you can use the ones in the University SINC sites, or most public computers such as those in libraries. This system doesn't work well with customized versions of Internet Explorer, such as the browser for AOL. Many people have had good success using the free Mozilla browser. We haven't had any problem using the Mozilla Firefox browser to set up the assignments.

The first thing you have to do is to get set up with the system if you haven't done so already. Here's how:

Go to the iLRN site and click on First Time Users.
Put "Stony Brook" in the search box, click Search, then select SUNY - STONY BROOK from the list on the right.
On the next page, enter the key E-Z9CHMJZ3G7KF
where it asks for the Course Access Code, and enter your email address.
On the next page, specify a password.
On the last page, fill out the rest of the information. It is important you give your name, student ID number and your section number correctly so that you can get credit for your work. Please enter your last/first name and Stony Brook ID exactly as they appear in your registrar record.
Finally, when you log in, the system will check that you have an appropriate Java plug-in installed, and have popup windows enabled.

Printing homework assignments

It may seem that you have to do your homework at the computer. This is not the case (although you certainly can if you wish). You can log in, print out your homework assignment, do the work, and enter the answers later. Here's how to do this (it isn't obvious):

From the page where you select the assignment you want to do, click the Take button if you haven't started the assignment yet. When the page comes up, click Start.
When the first problem comes up, if you don't have time to do it now, click Print in your browser menu. Do this for each problem you would like to print out. You may then click Save Progress and come back later to enter your answers for the assigned homework.

Homework Policies

Web based homeworks are due at noon on Thursdays in the week following the week in which they appear; for example, the web based homework, assigned in week 2, is due Thursday Sept 15. It is better to work on the problems well before the due date, both because you'll learn better and because you'll save yourself headaches when the inevitable computer glitch happens.

All other (paper) homework assignments are due on the first recitation meeting following the week in which they appear.

Help

For the useful website with many resources for college math students click here. For any questions regarding web-based assignments please contact Andrew Stimpson (office: Math 3-101, e-mail stimpson@math.sunysb.edu). Please include your Name and SB id and put MAT126 in your subject line, or you will NOT get an answer to your email!

Late homeworks will not be accepted.