Joe P. Chen's Past Teaching



July 2017: A lecture covering the (very classical) Thomson's principle for electric networks at Universität Bielefeld, Germany. This leads up to my moving particle lemma for the exclusion process.

At Colgate

MATH 487: Real Analysis II (Spring '20, Spring '24).

MATH 483: Senior Seminar in Mathematics (Fall '23).

MATH 417: Brownian Motion & Stochastic Calculus (Spring '22, run as independent study).

Official course description. Links to the textbook by Louis-Pierre Arguin, A First Course in Stochastic Calculus: AMS Bookstore, Colgate library access.

MATH 377: Real Analysis I (Spring '18, AY '21~'22, Fall '23).

Slides from the Fall '23 version of the course (open to Colgate users only)

40 lectures---each corresponding to a 50-minute class---covering the completeness of the reals; sequences and series; topology on the real line; limits and continuity; differentiation; and Riemann integration. Culminated with Lebesgue's theorem on Riemann integrability.

MATH 214: Linear Algebra (Fall '17, Spring '22, Spring '24).

Slides are being updated for Spring '24 (open to Colgate users only)

41 lectures---each corresponding to a 50-minute class---based loosely on Gilbert Strang's Introduction to Linear Algebra (5th ed.) This version had a stronger emphasis on numerical linear algebra; preparation for future study in data analysis; and a cohesive account of the fundamental theorem of linear algebra. Quick MATLAB commands for matrix operations & decompositions were indicated as much as possible. The course culminated with the 5 characterizations of a positive definite matrix, and the singular value decomposition (SVD) of a matrix.

MATH 313: Functions of a Complex Variable (Spring '17, Fall '19, Fall '21).

MATH 163: Calculus III (Spring '17, AY '17~'18, AY '20~'21).

FSEM 144: Statistics in Real Life (Fall '20).

CORE 143S: Introduction to Statistics (Spring '20).

MATH 316: Probability (Fall '19).

P.S.: The Colgate version of Undergraduate Probability was harder than the UConn version. I covered more thoroughly transformations of univariate distributions, and assigned the proof of Hoeffding's inequality on the final assignment.

MATH 112: Calculus II (Fall '16).


At UConn

MATH 3150: Analysis I (Spring 2016).

MATH 3799: Spectral graph theory (Spring 2016).

An independent study course. We covered roughly the first 12 of Dan Spielman's course notes, some functional analysis (Laplacian ↔ Dirichlet form ↔ semigroup, connection to Markov chains), and Doyle and Snell's "Random walks and electric networks".

MATH 3160: Probability (Fall 2013, AY 2014-15, AY 2015-16).

Some of the materials I've used in teaching this course have been adapted in the current iteration of MATH 3160. See the UConn Undergraduate Probability OER.

MATH 5160: Probability Theory & Stochastic Processes I (Fall 2015, graduate-level).

MATH 3170: Stochastic Processes (Spring 2014).

MATH 2110: Multivariable Calculus (Spring 2014).


Probability teaching (at UConn)

My handcrafted creations of probability problems

I taught the Honors version of MATH 3160 (to be renamed MATH 3165 in 2017) in Spring 2015 and Fall 2015.
For a history of Honors probability at UConn, see my report [pdf].

Tom Roby and I recorded Lightboard video lectures for MATH 3160 in Fall 2015, with the assistance of the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning. UConn affiliates can access the video catalog using their NetIDs and passwords. If you are not a UConn affiliate and wish to access the videos, please contact me or Tom.


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