Instructor: Jonathan Sands, Room 404, 16 Colchester Ave. (Henry Marcus Lord House)
Reach me at: 656-4339 or sands@cems.uvm.edu
Office hours: M 12:15-1:15 , Tu 1-2, W 3:30-4:30, F 12-12:30 and by appointment.
Or send me your question by email. No question is too small!

Goals: Developing the mathematical habits of experimenting, pondering, conjecturing, and proving through the study of the natural numbers. Perhaps the most important habit is skepticisim:  you should remain unconvinced until you have meticulously scrutinized an argument in which you agree that every step leaves no room for doubt. Along the way, we will become familiar with the basic topics of elementary number theory: congruences, primes, powers, integer solutions to equations, and sequences. 

Text: A Friendly Introduction to Number Theory, Third Edition, By J. Silverman. The library has many good supplementary texts in elementary number theory.

Homework: I will assign weekly homework for your fun and profit by posting it on the homework page. Problem sets covering the material each week will normally be due on the following Wednesday at the beginning of class. Often the main point of the homework is to simply encourage you to experiment and reflect on your findings, so it will be graded accordingly, based on your effort to do just that.  Your two lowest homework grades will not be counted towards your course grade.

Tests: There will be tests in class on Wednesday, March 3, and on Monday,  April 5. Please warn me at least one week in advance if you must miss a test.

Projects: You and three other students will study one of the later sections of the textbook which is not covered in class and submit homework problems from that section.

Final Exam: Comprehensive 3-hour exam in 254 Votey on Thursday, May 6 at 8am.

Course Grades: Each of the 2 tests will be worth 20% of your grade and the final exam will be worth 25%. The project will be worth 7.5% and class participation will be worth 2.5%   The remaining 25% of your grade will be based on your homework, with two homework grades excluded. Letter grades will be assigned in accordance with the traditional standards for this course. In particular, a numerical grade of 90% will translate into at least an A-, 80% will translate into at least a B-, 70% will translate into at least a C-, etc.

Expectations: Please consult the  "Student responsibility" section of the UVM catalog for the classroom code of conduct and policy on attendance.  The UVM academic integrity policy  is in effect, as always. In particular, always be sure to give proper attribution for work or ideas that are not your own.

Special Needs: If you are eligible and need an accomodation, please inform me and provide appropriate documentation during the first two weeks of class so that this can be implemented.