Meet Your Instructor:

 Hi, my name is Dr. George Sweeney. I am a full-time professor here at Santa Ana College.  I have a PhD in Math Education from the joint doctoral program at San Diego State and UC San Diego.  I also have a master's degree in Math from Cal Poly Pomona and a bachelor's from UCLA.  My fields of specialty are in research methodologies, Statistics, Linear Algebra, and Data Science.  I am Bronze, Silver, and Gold certified in Canvas in-person and online teaching. My dissertation was on teaching and learning in Linear Algebra, and I have done research and been published in research in trigonometry, differential equations, physical chemistry and calculus.  I love to teach and do mathematics.  I am currently learning some new computer programming languages.  I also enjoy meditating, making music, reading, playing with my kids, and hanging out with my wife.  I have been married for 14 years and I have two children, 3 and 6.

The following is an excerpt of the course syllabus, make sure that you read the complete syllabus above.

Important note about the workload for this course:  Although this course is online and allows for maximal flexibility, the course maintains the same expectations as any other in person college course.  This means that the hours expected of students to work on the course are equivalent to those in person.  

During a sixteen week course, it normally takes between 8-12 hours of work for a student to be successful in Math 140 (meaning passing). The work gets progressively more difficult as the course wears on.  So make sure to schedule enough time to do the work.

Course Description:

This is a first-level college mathematics course intended for students who are looking to go into business or STEM.  This course leads directly into two subsequent courses.  Either College Algebra is immediately followed by Business Calculus for business majors or by Trigonometry and then the Calculus sequence for STEM students.  The course covers the algebra and analysis topics that are traditionally covered in Pre-Calculus.  Mastery of this algebraic material is incredibly important for your ability to do Calculus.  I highly recommend that you spend this semester learning and honing these very important skills because the next course will be difficult if you are not fluent in them.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

1. Analyze and investigate properties of functions;
2. Synthesize results from the graphs and/or equations of functions;
3. Apply transformations to the graphs of functions;
4. Recognize the relationship between functions and their inverses graphically and algebraically;
5. Solve and apply rational, linear, polynomial, radical, absolute value, exponential, and logarithmic equations and solve linear, nonlinear, and absolute value inequalities;
6. Solve systems of equations and inequalities;
7. Apply techniques for finding zeros of polynomials and roots of equations;
8. Apply functions and other algebraic techniques to model real world STEM and Business applications;
9. Analyze conics algebraically and graphically; and
10. Use formulas to find sums of finite and infinite series.
11. Utilize proper mathematical notation, including function notation.

A note about doing math assignments in the online environment: 

When using an online homework system, some students will do their written work on scratch paper and then just insert the answers. This is a really bad idea and will either lead to not doing well in the class or to you duplicating a lot of work.

Other than your work on the weekly discussion boards and your exam reviews, I will not be checking your written work on a regular basis.  But you will need to show all of your work on the exams.  I will also ask you to upload your written work when you need help on problems or if you are asked to do a problem for a discussion board. And we will want to be able to follow your work. 

Furthermore, you will have to write extensively in your Calculus and higher level courses. And it is much more difficult to learn mathematics if you do not write down your problems and your work in an orderly manner.  This is because math is a language and you are working on communicating in that language.  So, get a five subject notebook and write down every problem that you do for any reason in the notebook, by section.

Materials Needed: A scientific or graphing calculator is required for the course.  If you do not have a graphing calculator, you will want to be able to use Desmos on Desmos.com to    

Math Center Hours: The Math Center is open from 9:00am-7:50pm, Monday through Thursday and 10:00am-1:00pm.  There are statistics tutors in the Math Center and I would highly recommend you use them. The campus has also begun to use online tutors.  Information about NetTutors is in the module section online.

The Learning Center also has tutors that you can book for 1 hour sessions (generally in groups of 3).  In addition to my Academic Computing Center hours, there is another Math professor in the ACC form 2-6 on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Grading Breakdown