MT294: Real Analysis - Autumn 2014

Lecturer: Dr. Y. Barnea

Oce: 228 McCrea building
e-mail: y.barnea@rhul.ac.uk
Prerequisite: MT194
Teaching: 33 hour lectures
Assessment: Two hour written examination
Oce hours: Wednesday at 10:30-11:30, Friday at 10:30-11:30, and by appointment.
Text
As time permits I will produce detailed notes for the course. The notes of the week will be posted on
Moodle by Monday the following week. The main sources for my notes are Bartles and Sherberts
book, Rudins book and the notes from the previous lecturer. However, be careful, I am not following
any of them very closely. Generally, there are many introductory books for analysis. Bartles and
Sherberts book is probably the one which is most suitable for this course. Rudins book is an
excellent book, but it is challenging and could be useful to students who would like to learn stu
beyond this course. In particular, reading it is a very good preparation for graduate studies in
mathematics. I am not familiar with Burns book and Bryants book but they are standard British
books. They might be slightly below the level of this course and therefore easier to read than the
other books.
Introduction to Real Analysis, R. G. Bartle and D. R. Sherbert, Wiley & Sons , 3rd edition,
2000
Principles of Mathematical Analysis, W. Rudin, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 3 edition,
1976
Numbers and Functions (steps into analysis), R. P. Burn, Cambridge, 2000
Yet Another Introduction to Analysis, V. Bryant, Cambridge, 1990
Course structure
Lectures will be held in ABLT1 on Tuesday at 15-16, in BLT1 on Thursday at 15-16, and in MFLEC
on Friday at 12-13. In addition, from the second week there will be a one hour workshop (for all
second year pure maths courses) in MFLEC on Thursday at 13-14.
I will give homework every week (from the beginning of the second week) including the last week of
term which will be available on Moodle by Monday. Eight of these homework sheets will be collected
and marked. They will be due at the end of the Thursday lecture the following week.
The homework problems are compulsory, although they do not count towards the course assessment.
The homework problems include essential results and proofs for the course. You will not be able
to pass this course without a serious attempt at doing homework. You are not necessarily
expected to be able to solve all the homework problems, but you are expected to try to solve them.
You will get solutions for most of the problems, but without a serious attempt to solve the problem
yourselves it will be very dicult to understand the solutions.
Students are strongly encouraged to ask questions during the lectures.
Content
This is a course in pure mathematics, hence, includes a lot of proofs. Its purpose is to give you
the theoretical underpinnings for material you have seen in a course like MT171 and as such it is a
continuation of MT194. The following topics will be covered (as time permit): sequences and series
of numbers and functions, continuity, dierentiation, Riemann integral, and power series.
Note I made some changes from previous years. I reduced some topics about sequences and series in
an attempt to reach further into the syllabus.
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