Jason Cantarella


Welcome to the homepage for Differential Geometry (Math 4250/6250)! I will post all the homework assignments for the course on this page. Our text for the course is DoCarmo, which is a good text, but has a fair number of errors. See the electronic resources at the end of this page for a list of errors in the text-- if you are very confused, it is probably a good idea to check this list and make sure that the book is right!

Homework will be due on Thursdays, at more-or-less weekly intervals. Each assignment will contain 4 regular problems and 4 "challenge" problems. From these problems, you should pick five problems of your choice. Remember that undergraduates should average one challenge problem per assignment, while graduate students should average two challenge problems per assignment.

Office hours are Monday 3:30-5ish and Friday 1-2:30ish. My office is in Boyd 439.


Here are links to my lecture notes for the course; these will posted as I can manage it, to provide a supplement for the text in case you're having trouble, or want another perspective on what we did in class. These are LARGE scanned PDF files, so you probably don't want to download them at home.

Course Notes and Homework Assignments:
BJ Cooley has kindly provided copies of these notes in JPEG format.
This will be a lot faster to look at.
Please examine the course syllabus. If you think you can get by with this copy, save a tree! Don't print it out.
Practice Exams.

Two practice exams (for the first and second midterms) are available: first exam and second exam
Wikipedia extra credit challenge.

Find a topic from our class which is not covered (or poorly covered) in Wikipedia. Establish an account with your real name, or something close to it. Rewrite (or write) the entry, using your book as a primary source and other books, papers as needed. Email me the details, including your wikipedia username and the topic you intend to work on. I will edit/revise your entry if needed and grade it for up to 12 points of homework extra credit.
Topics chosen already (some provisionally):
Electronic Resources.

Poonen, List of errata in DoCarmo.
Bishop, There is more than one way to frame a curve.
Ghomi, h-Principles for Curves and Knots of Constant Curvature.

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