You are required to do a final project for this class.
For this project, you are asked to explore a topic related to the material in the class in some depth. Your deliverable for this activity will in most cases consist of a report of about 5 or more pages, although you could submit a computer program with code and a briefer report instead. (If you have other ideas for deliverables, I am open to that as well.)
Any report that you submit should ideally be typeset in LaTeX, which you can download for free online, although this is not required and I will not take points off if you do not use LaTeX. Reports are to be submitted by email to the professor, with the subject line “Math 128a Final Project”, by 11:59 PM on Thursday, December 13th. (If you would like to get your project done before exam week, you can certainly email it in sooner.) You are encouraged to email the professor with any questions.
Here are some suggestions for your final project:
Here are some guidelines for preparing a strong final project:
I would say a good way to think about the final project is: pick a topic you are interested in, and think about how you would explain it to someone else in the class. Then, try to present your explanation as a clear, compelling 5 page report. (Or in some other format — other formats are welcome!)
If you write a paper, you should probably start your paper with an abstract, where you say what you will do in the paper. Then, you should have a brief introduction, where you give for example very brief background and/or motivation for why the topic you are writing about should interest your audience. Then, you will have the body of your paper where you explain things clearly, giving good examples or relevant proofs. And then, probably, you will have a very brief conclusion. I think a really good test is — say one of your classmates gave you a 5 page paper to read about some topic they were interested in…what would that look like, so that you would enjoy reading it, and feel like you learned something interesting? If you write your paper with that in mind, I think you are likely to do a great job.
You might include references as well. This is not required; however, it is extremely important that the paper is in your own words, unless you are quoting someone else, for which proper citation is required.
If you would like to look at some strong sample papers, I would suggest:
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-034-honors-differential-equations-spring-2009/projects/. (The topic for that course was different than the topic for our course, but hopefully the samples are still useful.)
If you do a format other than a paper, just make sure it is compelling and strong. I am not grading looking for any one thing in particular; I will just be trying to reward high quality, diligent work.