M118 – Syllabus – Fall 2025

 

Syllabus for both Sections 2101 & 2103

Instructor: Greg Kattner (gkattner@iu.edu)

Office hours: Lindley Hall 023, MWF from 3:10 - 4pm

 

e-Text Book:   Finite Mathematics by Maki, Thompson, and McKinley, 6^th edition.

Our textbook is an IU e-Text. To access it, simply click on IU e-Text in the left margin of your Canvas page. To succeed with homework assignments and exams, it is essential that you study your e-Text alongside any other materials your instructor has prepared for you.  An e-Text fee was included among the fees for this course. Hence by enrolling in this class, you have already paid for the e-Text, and you have immediate access to it in Canvas. You need to do nothing more regarding our e-Text except to open it up and start browsing its pages to see what is there to be studied.

 

Calculators:

The Texas Instruments TI30 X II S 10-digit Solar Scientific Calculator will be allowed during our exams.  If you wish to have a calculator with you during our exams, then bring only this specific calculator.

 

Do not bring advanced calculators, such as scientific or graphing calculators, to our exams. Do not bring non-traditional calculators such as apps for your smart devices either.  Use of an advanced calculator during exams will be considered as an instance of academic dishonesty. 

 

 

 

Important exam dates:

 

Wed Sept 24 at our regular class time. This will be the first attempt at exam 1

Wed Oct 1 at our regular class time. This will be the second attempt at exam 1

 

 

Wed Nov 5 at our regular class time. This will be the first attempt at exam 2

Wed Nov 12 at our regular class time. This will be the second attempt at exam 2

 

 

Wed Dec 10 at our regular class time. This will be the first attempt at exam 3

Tues Dec 16 at 7:40pm. This will be the second attempt at exam 3

 

Building location, room number, and seat assignment will be announced in the Canvas View’em app a few days in advance of each exam. 

 

First attempt at each Exam: Attendance is required.

 

Second attempt at each Exam: Attendance is optional.

 

If you have any conflicts with our exam schedule, then please bring the matter to my attention right away.

 

Other Important dates:

 

Visit the registrar’s page to learn about various important dates such as deadlines for refunds, the last day to drop with an automatic grade of W, and more:

IUB Official Academic Calendar: Office of the Registrar: Indiana University Bloomington

 

Attendance:

If you must miss a class, then you can catch up by looking at lectures videos of past lectures that have been recorded and posted on Canvas under Media Gallery. These videos, which will post during the first week of class, are intended to complement the lecture notes posted on Canvas. Also, they tend to present a greater variety of examples than would otherwise fit into a 50-minute class lecture.

 

Attendance at lectures is not required, however attendance at the first attempt of each examination is required. 

 

Grade scale:

 

Edfinity on-line homework:                                                                      10%

 

Best result from the two available attempts at Exam 1:                        30%

Best result from the two available attempts at Exam 2:                        30%

Best result from the two available attempts at Exam 3:                        30%

 

A+         97 – 100%          B+         87 – 89%            C+              77 – 79%            D+         67 – 69%

 A           93 – 96%            B           83 – 86%            C              73 – 76%               D           63 – 66%

A–         90 – 92%            B–         80 – 82%            C–              70 – 72%            D–         60 – 62%

F    0 – 59%

 

Final course grades will be determined using the weights shown above. The numeric score that is arrived at will be rounded to the nearest whole number of percentage points and the letter grade then assigned.

 

Academic Dishonesty:

Academic misconduct will be dealt with as described in

The Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct. 

 

• Exams are not collaborative. You must do your own work.

 

• Enlisting, or seeking to enlist, the help of others to work your homework for you, whether as a favor to you or as a paid service, is considered academically dishonesty. Nevertheless, you are encouraged to use the AI tools that are available to you to help you explore and understand your homework problems, to help you prepare for exams, and to help you assess your exam performance after the exams are handed back to you.

 

• It is not academically dishonest to work on your Edfinity homework with your friends in a study group setting or with the assistance of a tutor. Edfinity is a resource to help you learn and to prepare for exams and it can only serve this purpose if you put a great deal of your own time into it.

 

Academic Dishonest will result in a formal report of the incident being submitted and may result in a grade of F.

Sexual Misconduct:

As part of the universities efforts to create a positive learning environment for all students, Title IX and IU’s Sexual Misconduct Policy prohibit sexual misconduct in any form, including sexual harassment, sexual assault, stalking, dating violence, or generally any domestic violence. If you are seeking help or advice regarding sexual misconduct you can speak to someone confidentially by contacting any of the following services:

 

• The Sexual Assault Crisis Services (SACS) at (812) 855-8900 (counseling services)
• Confidential Victim Advocates (CVA) at (812) 856-2469 (advocacy and advice services)
• IU Health Center (812) 855-4011 (health and medical services)

 

Religious Observation:

Students with conflicts between course requirements (e.g. examinations) and religious observances must contact their instructor during the first two weeks of the semester and follow the procedures outlined by campus policy, available at: https://vpfaa.indiana.edu/resources/religious-observances-information.html

 

General Education requirements satisfied by M118 – Finite Mathematics:

This course is considered as both a Mathematical Modeling and a Natural and Mathematical Sciences course. More information about the learning objectives satisfied by courses such as M118 may be found at https://gened.indiana.edu/requirements/index.html

 

Homework:

Homework assignments are on-line, and our homework system is called WeBWorK. It is brought to us by a service provider named Edfinity.  To get started on your homework, look in the left margin of your Canvas page until you find the Edfinity button.  Click on Edfinity and follow the directions leading you to your WeBWorK. Make your initial visit to WeBWorK right away so that you can note the due dates of your first assignments.  Don’t let your first assignments expire before you’ve made your first visit to WeBWorK! As with your eText, an Edfinity Fee was included among the fees for this course and so you have already paid for Edfinity, and you have immediate access to it in Canvas.  Edfinity support offers the following comments to help you get started:

 

• Be sure to use the latest version of Google Chrome or Firefox.
• Be sure you’ve enabled third-party cookies in your browser.
• If you haven't already, do NOTcreate an account at edfinity.com.
• If you already have an account, make sure you are signed out of edfinity.com.
• Log into your LMS (Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, etc.).
• Click on the links your instructor added to access your course.

 

WeBWorK is intended to be a collaborative homework activity.  We want you to interact with others as you work to figure out how to solve your WeBWorK problems.  We don’t want you to sit alone, feeling miserable and depressed because you can’t finish an assignment in time.  Start assignments as soon as they are available. Get help (see the help resources listed below) whenever you worry that you won’t be able to finish an assignment on time.  Many WeBWorK assignments will be posted this semester, and there will be times when you may become overwhelmed with all your other course work or times when illness or accidents make it hard to get an assignment finished on time. When this happens, you will be able to continue working past the due date for up to 3 days, earning up to 80% of the points from any of the work submitted after the official due date.  Additionally, as another way to recognize that there are times when a hard-working student cannot finish all their assignments on time, we plan to drop 10% of the WeBWorK at the semester’s end to ease the burden of uncompleted assignments.

 

 

Learning Objectives for M118 – Finite Mathematics

1. Students should become proficient in using combinatorics and probability to model

problems in a variety of applied areas. This includes identifying which problems can be solved using such methods, solving the resulting mathematical problems, and

drawing qualitative conclusions from numerical solutions.

 

 

2. Students should become proficient in modeling using systems of linear equations in

a variety of applied areas. This includes creating variables, translating information about the relationships among these variables into linear equations, incorporating other given data, solving the resulting mathematical problems, and drawing qualitative conclusions from the numerical solutions.

 

 

3. Students should become proficient in modeling linear decision-making problems in

settings drawn both from business and from everyday experience. This includes the

identification of unknowns and the incorporation of any given data and other information to write one or more linear equations to address the questions being asked in the problem.

 

Help resources:

 

• Free on-line Finite Math help is available through our Math Learning Center (MLC) each afternoon, Monday through Friday beginning in the second week of classes. Any student enrolled in M118 is welcome. For more information about the MLC, and to learn about other help that we make available to our M118 students, please visit https://math.indiana.edu/undergraduate/academic-support.html

 

• Note that there is a bank of past exams to study from, with answers, to be found on your Canvas page

 

• WeBWorK assignments, in addition to being assigned work that forms part of your grade, also make an excellent study vehicle

 

• PASS Tutoring is a helpful resource too. For more information, visit https://sac.indiana.edu/pass/index.html

 

 

• Following is an approximate schedule for this semester. In the right column below, you can find a list of good exercises that you can use to assist you as you prepare for exams.  Instructors will ultimately decide when topics should be covered and how much time to devote to them.  We plan to reach chapter 4 section 1 by the time of our midterm exam.

 

It will help you to study the examples in these sections of our e-Text and to consider the following e-Text exercises:

 

Pages 9 – 11, exercises:  1, 5, 7, 9, 11, 15, 17, 19, 21, 25, 27, 29

 

Pages 17 – 20, exercises:  1, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 19, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31

 

Pages 25 – 29, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13,15, 16, 17, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29

 

Pages 37 – 40, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 29, 31

 

Pages 64 – 66, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 24, 25, 27, 29, 31, 37

 

Pages 74 – 77, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 30, 36

 

Pages 41 – 44, exercises:  3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 19, 25, 28, 29, 32, 33

 

Pages 84 – 87, exercises:  1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 25, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 39

 

Pages 54 – 58, exercises:  1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 21, 25, 26, 27, 29, 32

 

Pages 80 – 83, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 23, 27, 31

 

Pages 96 – 100, exercises:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 25, 26, 27, 29

 

Pages 96 – 100, exercises:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 25, 26, 27, 29

 

Pages 106 – 108, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29

 

Pages 116 – 120, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 23, 27, 29, 33

 

Pages 116 – 120, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 23, 27, 29, 33

 

Pages 125 – 131, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 29, 31

 

Pages 146 – 149, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 31, 33

 

Pages 146 – 149, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 31, 33

 

Pages 41 – 44, exercises:  3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 19, 25, 28, 29, 32, 33

 

Pages 84 – 87, exercises:  1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 25, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 39

 

Pages 131 – 135, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29 - 33

 

Pages 173 – 177, exercises:  1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17a, 31, 34

 

Pages 156 – 159, exercises:  1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27

 

Pages 168 – 172, exercises:  1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 25, 27, 29, 31

 

Pages 192 – 194, exercises:  3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 23, 26

 

Pages 205 – 208, exercises:  3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 28

 

Pages 225 – 229, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 27, 29

 

Pages 173 – 177, exercises:  1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17a, 31, 34

 

Pages 229 – 234, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33

 

Pages 246 – 251, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 27, 30, 31

 

Pages 259 – 264, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 20, 21, 25, 31

 

Pages 274 – 278, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 24, 29

 

Pages 338 – 344, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27

 

Pages 352 – 357, exercises:  1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 21, 22, 23, 29

 

Pages 367 – 372, exercises:  1, 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 24, 31

 

Pages 229 – 234, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33

 

Pages 278 – 283, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26

 

Pages 390 – 396, exercises:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14a, 15a, 25, 31, 33, 35