I am emailing a link of this to everyone on the class list every week. If you are not receiving these emails or want to have them sent to another email address feel free to email me at jpmccarthymaths@gmail.com and I will add you to the mailing list.

Assessment 1

Assessment 1 is on this Wednesday in the Melbourne Building at 6.15 pm. However you should aim to arrive at around 6.05 p.m. Keep an eye on your CIT Blackboard and email for the latest and definitive assessment information.

Man-Hours Problem

A problem similar to the following will appear on Assessment 1 but was not covered in lectures:

If it takes five men two hours to do a job, how long will it take eight men to do the same job.

I recommend that you think of this problem as follows.

• If it takes five men, two hours to the job then you have $5\times 2=$ a ten hour job on your hands (each of five men worked for two hours so ten hours in total).
• Now the eight men are dividing the ten hour job into eight parts so it will take them $\frac{10}{8}=1.25$ hours equals an hour and 15 minutes.

To set this up in more generality, define $N=\#$ men and $t=t(N)$ time taken for $N$ men to the job.

From a above we see that the job, in man hours (or just hours), say $J$ is equal to

$J=N\cdot t(N)$ so that $t(N)=\frac{J}{N}$.

In this problem we have $N=5$ and $t(5)=2$ so we have

$J=5\cdot t(5)=5\times2=10$,

so that

$t(8)=\frac{J}{8}=\frac{10}{8}=1.25\text{ hours}$

Week 3

In Week 3 we finished looking at Tax & Interest and this concluded our study for Assessment 1. After this we looked at some geometry and trigonometry.

Week 4

In Week 4 we will finish trigonometry and start discussing approximation and perhaps statistics.

Tutorials

• Group A with Mr. Adrian O’Connor: Wednesday 09:00 in B187 and Thursday 09:00 in B185
• Group B with myself: Monday 12:00 in F1. 3 and Thursday 12:00 in B165

Self-Study

If you go to

Blackboard -> MATH6000 -> Content -> Numbas Tests,

you will find plenty of online tests developed by Mr. Pat Ahern. Give them a try if you are at a computer!

Please feel free to ask me questions about the exercises via email or even better on this webpage.

Assessment 2

Assessment 2 is on in Week 6. Keep an eye on your CIT Blackboard for the latest and definitive assessment information.

I would urge anyone having any problems with material that isn’t being addressed in the tutorials to use the Academic Learning Centre. As you can see the timetable is quite generous. You will get best results if you come to the helpers there with specific questions.

Math.Stack Exchange

If you find yourself stuck and for some reason feel unable to ask me the question you could do worse than go to the excellent site math.stackexchange.com. If you are nice and polite, and show due deference to these principles you will find that your questions are answered promptly. For example, my own question where I needed to show that similar triangles are enlargements.

Maple Online & Wolfram Alpha

If you are subscribed to CIT MathsOnline you will have free access to the mathematical software package Maple:

Self-enrolment for Maths Online