Syllabus for Math 428, fall 2020

Syllabus for
Math 428, Sections C and CNL Fall 2020
Category theory.
Under construction!

Professor: Eugene Lerman
Office: 336 Illini Hall
email: lerman at illinois edu (the best way to contact Eugene Lerman)
Home page: https://faculty.math.illinois.edu/~lerman
Course page: http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~lerman/428/f20/428f20.html
course notes, videos and review sheets are posted at
http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~lerman/428/f20/428f20hw.html
homework and exams are on Moodle (Moodle login help is here )
Office Hours: on Zoom, links will be posted on the Moodle site of the course
Class meets:

10:00 am - 10:50 am MWF Psychology Building 23

Prerequisites: Some abstract algebra. Groups will be used freely to illustrate concepts.

Textbooks: No textbook is required. The following books are recommended. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any good undergraduate texts.

Mac Lane, Categories for the working mathematician. A graduate level text written by one of the originators of category theory. A bit dated by now. Should have been called "Categories for a mathematician who is willing to work hard." Available from SpringerLink here

Category Theory in Context

Tom Leinster Basic Category Theory. Also available from Cambridge U Press, hardcopy and electronic. It is a graduate level course.
A page of links to lecture notes and online books created by Peter Smith

Homework: Homework problems are to be assigned once a week. They are due the following week. No late homework will be accepted. There are several reasons why I want the homework to be turned in on time. First of all, if you are not keeping up with the homework, you are not keeping up with the class and then you may well get lost in the lectures. Secondly, it is hard to grade fairly the homework that is turned in late. The grader would have to keep careful track of the grading rubrics and so on. In short: late homework is bad for you and means more work for the grader.

Exams: There two midterms and a final. All midterm exams will be closed book and will be administered by CBTF on Zoom.
The midterms are scheduled to take place on 10/12/2020 and 11/18/2020 10am-10:50 am Central time (plus 10 minutes to scan and upload); the dates are not likely to change.
The final, according to the non-combined final examination schedule is to take place 8:00am - 11:00 am on Monday December 14
Requests for make-up exams require a serious documentation and are (almost) never granted. Please plan accordingly. I will drop the lowest homework score.
Grade: The formula for the course grade is roughly as follows:

final exam = 35 %
2 midterms at 20 % each = 40%
homework = 25%

The formula is here to give you a sense of how you are doing in the class. This said, I strongly recommend studying for the final no matter how well you are doing on the midterms and the homeworks.

Return to Lerman's home page

Last modified: Wed Aug 19 12:09:10 CDT 2020

Syllabus for Math 428, Sections C and CNL Fall 2020 Category theory. Under construction!

Syllabus for
Math 428, Sections C and CNL Fall 2020
Category theory.
Under construction!