Guide for instructors

The original MASS course on which this text is based ran for 14 weeks, with three 50-minute lectures in each week (given by the second author). This structure has been preserved in the present book and may be used as a rough guide if you wish to use this book as the text for a class. However, some circumstances of the original course are worth noting. As part of the MASS program, the students, primarily junior and senior undergraduate math majors, formed a tight-knit and energetic group, spending a significant amount of time outside of class hours working with each other on the course material. They had a one-hour tutorial session each week with the course TA (the first author), and smaller groups often met with the TA for informal tutorials outside of this time. All of this combined to allow a faster pace of presentation than would otherwise have been possible.