# MA20216: Algebra 2A

## Welcome

This is the home page of MA20216: Algebra 2A taught by Fran Burstall.

## Announcements

• ### Revision lectures

I will give revision lectures in the Wednesday 12:15 and Thursday 17:15 slots of revision week.

There is still time to mail me and help set the agenda.

• ### Revision tutorials

There will be tutorials in revision week focussing on the mock exam.

Some times, places and tutors will have changed: check moodle for details.

## The story so far

I keep a diary of what I covered in lectures. There is also an official syllabus and a reading list.

Here is the timetable. I shall lecture 5 times every 2 weeks and have a problem class every Wednesday of an odd week, starting in week 5. Please mail me tell me which questions to cover in the problem class.

## Exercise sheets

Exercise sheets will be issued weekly on Fridays and homework should be handed a week later after which solutions will be available here.

## Lecture notes

By public demand but with serious misgivings, I am putting up typeset notes as soon as they become available.

WARNING: these are not a substitute for taking your own careful notes during lectures. In particular, these notes are a work in progress and will certainly contain many mistakes (if you find any, report them to me!).

## Forums

There are two forums on moodle associated to this unit where you can ask me questions (equally, you can just send me an email):

• Discussion forum: for maths questions around the course material and exercise sheets.

You can unsubscribe to either forum if they do not interest you.

## Assessment

This unit is assessed 100% by exam. Generic exam feedback will be available early in the spring. Individual exam feedback will be offered after the marks come out.

### Mock exam

Year 2 exams have a new format this year and I have changed the focus of the course a little.

Here is a mock exam with solutions that should be a good approximation to the real thing.

### Past papers

Despite this year's changes, the past papers from previous years (available from the library) are still a good revision aid with the following caveats:

1. The format is different: the rubric was to answer three questions out of four. There was no section A or B.
2. The questions are a bit longer.
3. There are questions on things we did not cover:
• Tensor products: avoid sub-questions with $\otimes$ in them, such as Q4(a) on the 2015/6 exam.
• Free vector spaces: avoid sub-questions with things like $\mathbb{F}_{\mathcal{I}}$ in them, such as Q1 on the 2016/7 exam.

• Some nice slides showing the Singular Value Decomposition in action for image compression.

## Feedback

I welcome feedback in the form of constructive comments or criticism.

### Problems with this site?

If you encounter any problems while using this site, send me mail describing as completely as you can what has gone wrong.