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/sci/ - Science & Math

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10427934 No.10427934 [Reply] [Original]

"You think math is easy? Wait until calculus!"
>98% in calculus class, perfect final score
"Well that isn't real calculus! Calculus II is where you're really gonna have a bad time!"
>integration techniques are just a meme review
>series and sequences are super intuitive if you just get your rhythm down

I'm not going to claim I'm a genius. But, as long as I've put in the hours to learning the material, it seems to come incredibly naturally and make sense. Is calculus ii really that difficult or have I just been talking to people who particularly struggled with it? And what makes series hard?

Last of all, what do I need to watch out for?

>> No.10427940

>>10427934
>Last of all, what do I need to watch out for?
QFT, Algebraic Geometry, and maybe not being able to build muscle

>> No.10427955

>>10427940
Are those calculus II topics? They're not, right?

For reference, my major requires calc and calc II, linear algebra and differential equations.

Also all my muscle is in my legs because I'm a runner and biker but my arms are scrawny af. I'm lifting now but dont want to do anything like protein because that will make me too thicc I'm afraid.

>> No.10427964

>>10427955
Not sure what calc II is since I'm not American but if it's series and shit don't worry it's fucking trivial. You should ace it without needing to study (well, just the basic facts and if your iq is three-digit you ace everything)

linear algebra and diff eq are also trivial in the first three years

There's no such a thing as "too thicc" for a guy's muscles, *especially* arms... I wish I had to stop lifting in order "not to get too thick"

so yeah if you're not a dumbass don't worry you're not at the stage where math is difficult... at all... you're very far from it

>> No.10427966

>>10427955
>For reference, my major requires calc and calc II, linear algebra and differential equations.
cs brainlet spotted

>> No.10427969

>>10427934
Brainlets try to either cram in 3 days, or spend all semester rewriting the textbook as if that's going to teach them to solve problems.

I don't know how americans divide their subjects, but it seems like you're still doing subjects that are mostly procedural and focused on calculation. It's normal for this to be smooth sailing.
The most common filter subjects are wherever students first make the transition from "calculate" to "prove". The best thing you can do right now is just stop occasionally and ask yourself something like
>but can I really justify that, and how?

Really, if you're diligent and can follow a line of logical argument you should be able to make the transition well enough. You probably don't need to worry.

>> No.10427968

>>10427964
Muscular wise yeah you can't get too thicc, but the probably comes in when you stop prioritizing your need to have big rock arms in your life and all that mass disintegrates into fat.

Is it that bad to be a skinny nibba?

>> No.10427970

>>10427955
>For reference, my major requires calc and calc II, linear algebra and differential equations.
If your major only requires this level of math you're probably taking watered down math for dummies (i.e CS or bio major)

>> No.10427971

>>10427966
Chemical engineering.

Emphasis more on chemistry than the other engineering fields and as a result you don't get into deeper classes for math it seems

>> No.10427974

>>10427955
>For reference, my major requires calc and calc II, linear algebra and differential equations.

Oh shit son, this is all garbage. You'll be fine. Shutup and calculate.

>> No.10427975

>>10427970
Everyone who studied engineering or hardline STEM takes the same math classes I do up until calc III and after dif eq

>> No.10427976

>>10427971
How will you even get through your physics / thermo classes without vector calculus / calc III or PDE's ?

>> No.10427978

>>10427975
Does your math class cover proofs?

>> No.10427979

>>10427974
lmao why do people let math classes discourage them from engineering

>> No.10427983
File: 274 KB, 898x374, CS viewpoints.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10427983

>>10427934

>> No.10427984

>>10427976
I only have two physics classes unless you count thermo or fluid dynamics or statics. I'm not sure yet. I guess we will see.

>> No.10427987

>>10427969
I had a hard time with pre calc 2, I had 98% going into the final, but scored a 38%, and if I recall, the final was worth 40% of the total grade. I did every homework assignment, went to every class, did the reading. Average score for the final was literally 30%, it was a department final so the instructors didn't even know what would be on it. I passed with a C, one Chinese kid got a B and everyone else in my class of 18 failed. Next semester they revised the rubric so that if you fail the final, you fail the class, so I suppose I was lucky in that regard.

>> No.10427990

>>10427984
Again, how do you learn fluid dynamics without calc 3 and PDE's

>> No.10427994

>>10427987
>precalc 2
Did they hand out the wrong final?

>> No.10427997

>>10427971
>Chemical engineering
Lmao. Chemistry and engineering, the worst of both worlds

>> No.10427999

>>10427990
Well, are PDEs not covered in differential equations? My plan has me taking that prior to fluids. For multivariable calculus, I dont know because I dont understand the material or content of either course yet. I suppose I'll just learn on the go.

>> No.10428002

>>10427997
How so? I'm a second semester freshman, so do tell before it's too late. From what I've heard it's a decent route.

>> No.10428006

>>10427999
Calc III is a hard pre-requisite for PDE's

>> No.10428009

>>10428006
Why is it that so many people at my college take DEs before or without Calc iIi? Is my college just retarded brain let university? Lol actually curious to hear this

>> No.10428014

>>10428002
don’t do engineering unless all you want is a paycheck and a wife who will cuck you

>> No.10428015

>>10427987
Something is very wrong in your department then, fuck. There shouldn't be such a gulf between coursework and exam content. Either the rest of the course needs to be tuned up, or the exam writer is a spiteful cunt. There are some who take pride in "selecting for talent" rather than educating.

>> No.10428018

>>10428014
t. Pissed off math major?

>> No.10428020

>>10427955
>For reference, my major requires calc and calc II, linear algebra and differential equations.
Linear algebra for engineers is easy as fuck. Literally just vectors and matrices. ODE is just a rehash of calc 2. You'll be fine.

>> No.10428023

>>10428014
Go to bed, Elon.

>> No.10428028

>>10427966
>>10427970
CS major reporting in.
The curriculum at my school requires Analysis 1 and 2, discrete math (proofs), Combinatorics and graph theory (proofs), and Linear algebra 1 and 2 (both proof based) for first year. Even the non math classes are proof based (algo and data structures).

I don't know what kind of CS you are talking about.

>> No.10428084

>>10428009
>Why is it that so many people at my college take DEs before or without Calc iIi?
Normally DE's are taken concurrently with Calc III and then after both are covered you are introduced to PDE's

>> No.10428089

>>10428028
>discrete math (proofs)
trivial
>Combinatorics and graph theory (proofs)
trivial
> Linear algebra 1 and 2 (both proof based)
matrix multiplication is not linear algebra
>>10428028
>algo and data structures
You can cover the material in 4 days by yourself

>> No.10428096

>>10427955
Eat some lowfat/carb protein like hemp seeds

Also, most people aren't smart Anon. Don't listen to them.

>> No.10428122

>>10427934
>Last of all, what do I need to watch out for?
Linear Algebra might kick your ass if you don't go in wit ha studious mindset, but otherwise, nothing particularly egregious.

If you were taking more math than just CS, I'd tell you to watch out for complex analysis.
Mathematical Statistics is a massive jump up from Probability, too, and Stochastics from Math Stats is a fucking hurdle.

>> No.10428130
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10428130

>>10428122
>mathematical statistics
>stochastics

Why am I turned on by this

>> No.10428132

>>10427934
Hey anon I want to get good at Calculud as well, can you give me some tips on your study methods and how you remembered all that stuff?

>> No.10428133

>>10428132
Which math are you in right now brother? I'd be happy to help regardless.

>> No.10428145

>>10428130
It's fun stuff, man, but it's definitely some of the heaviest math you're going to see outside of a raw pure math degree.
We've just now gotten to poisson processes in my stochastics class and the prof spent an entire lecture going over the theory and notation alone without even so much as starting on a worked example.

>> No.10428154
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10428154

>>10428145
A B S O L U T E L Y
S A D I S T I C

>> No.10428165

>>10428133
I'm currently at high school level calculus but I'm really self teaching myself most of it and I started at Pre-Algebra, and I'd like to hear about your study methods. One day (hopefully next year) I'll be able to get into University, but I need to get a high average in 6 courses, 3 of which are Advanced Functions, Calculus and Vectors, and Data Management.

>> No.10428192

>>10428165
Okay man well I don't have a whole lot of magic tricks for you. The most important thing us to invest hours outside of class learning the stuff on your own and learning to have fun with it. Do all your homework early and on time. If you felt you scratched by a particular assignment, go back and repeat problems or find new ones until you get comfortable.

It comes down to motivation and perspective. Most people will hate calculus if they convince themselves they hate math, but it's actually fun for those who see application and joy in it.

I recommend using a whiteboard to work problems out and then repeating them on assignment paper. Doing so refreshes and solidifies concepts more effectively.

Know what you have to memorize and what you don't. It varies by professor. The unit circle, derivative and integral rules of logarithms and exponential functions, and the trigonometric derivatives and integrals are the ones I most had to memorize and the concepts people seem to despise the most.

I'm not that intelligent and so my studying would involve me spending hours in the library in the initial months of both semesters, including for hours on Saturday mornings. But the time flew by because i really enjoy the feeling I get doing math.

Overall: Pay attention and practice. Push yourself and ask yourself why the math works the way it does. Find out what it means to derive, to integrate, and the significance of sequences.

Does that make sense?

>> No.10428201

>>10428192
It actually makes a lot of sense, a whiteboard doesn't sound like a bad idea either, thanks dude!

>> No.10428204

>>10428201
No problem. Let me know if you have questions about anything more concrete. just love your life

>> No.10428332

>>10427987
>PreCal 2
Wtf is this new? Like I took precal and all that but I haven't heard of it being broken down into two classes. Like just basic algebra, trig, and intro to limits right?

>> No.10428416

>>10428165
Tuba Jam used to dumb a lot of books on studying IIRC, look it up in the archives by putting "mega" in the search field and "tuba jam" in the name field.

>> No.10428431

>>10428154
It's weird; for some reason everyone absolutely shits the bed on the first exam, which is mostly just a review (and some extras) of conditional, marginal, and joint probabilities and moments.
The average is always somewhere between a 15 and a 50 I've heard. This semester the average was a 40.

>> No.10428439

>>10428014
>don’t do engineering unless all you want is a paycheck and a wife who will cuck you
I don't want a wife, just plan on cloning myself
Sounds good

>> No.10428567

>>10427934
Anon, I hate to burst your bubble, but calculus is not "real" math. I mean, the name itself - calculus - should have given you a hint. In fact, in many countries proper mathematical analysis is taught to economists/engineers without streamlining into a braindead collection of recipes, aka calculus. Open a textbook on actual math likeK-theory or cohomology of algebraic varieties and you'll quickly get back to earth.

I see in one of your posts you mention chemistry. As a pure mathematician, I worked in a quantum chemistry research group for just over a year, and the math I had to apply (to develop the models, analytically assess solutions and their properties like uniqueness/smoothness, and numerically estimate it) was way beyond any standard course in PDEs. Not even mentioning that learning quantum mechanics is essential for understanding how chemistry actually works.

>> No.10428661

>>10428089
Stop trivializing classes just because a cs major took them. The math requirements are probably taught by the math department. So unless you are saying the entire math department is trivial, then stfu.

>> No.10428668

>>10428028
None of that is anymore impressive than diff eq

>> No.10428699

>>10428661
are you fucking retarded?

>> No.10428757

>>10427934
>Is calculus ii really that difficult or have I just been talking to people who particularly struggled with it?

Doing calculus problems without recognizing the pattern is what makes it difficult

>> No.10428791

>>10427934
Couple weeks into calculus 1 now, doing well, already past the chain rule and beyond. Quotient rule was a joke. Product rule remains my specialty.

I ask my professor his thoughts on quantum mechanics and partial derivatives. He's impressed i know about the subject. We converse after class for some time, sharing mathematical insights; i can keep up. He tells me of great things ahead like series and laplacians. I tell him i already read about series on wikipedia. He is yet again impressed at my enthusiasm. What a joy it is to have your professor visibly brighten when he learns of your talents.

And now I sit here wondering what it must be like to be a brainlet, unable to engage your professor as an intellectual peer. All of the deep conversations you people must miss out on because you aren't able to overcome the intellectual IQ barrier that stands in the way of your academic success... it's so sad. My professor and I know each other on first name basis now, but i call him Dr. out of respect.

And yet here you brainlets sit, probably havent even made eye contact with yours out of fear that they will gauge your brainlet IQ levels.

A true shame, but just know it is because i was born special that i am special. I can't help being a genius, nor can my professor. Two of a kind is two flocks in a bush.

>> No.10428800

>>10428791
This is some premium bait, anon.

>> No.10428817

>>10428165
Are you Canadian? Those are the three main math classes available for 4U highschool students in Ontario. If so, the best advice I can give is to practise your algebra, especially when it comes to working with radicals / rationalizing the denominator, which is important for the early stages of calculus where you are differentiating (taking the slope) of rational functions. The vast majority of mistakes made in grade 12 calculus come from incorrect algebra. Learn to expand powers of binomials (stuff like (x+2)^4 ) using the binomial theorem if you haven't already (the binomial theorem will also come up in data management).

Other than that, data management it probably the easiest of those three for most people. Make sure you actually understand why things like permutations and combinations work, and you will have a much easier time both remembering how to use them, and determining when to use them.

Have you already taken advanced functions? If not, make sure you pay extra attention to the trig identities unit. Though it isn't nearly as difficult as a university proofs course, it is probably the most similar thing you will get. Make sure, once again, that you know why each identity works, and treat each problem like a puzzle, if that helps.

Finally, if you have the time to spare, and are confident enough to tackle some problems that require a bit of mathematical thinking as opposed to rote 'calculate this', check out the 'eWorkshops' that the University of Waterloo has for preparing for the Euclid math contest. All problems should be doable with only highschool level math, and the identities the problem sheets provide you. Try and solve each one on your own, but consider checking the solutions afterwards, especially for proofs questions, as sometimes the ability to get your proof across in a concise and mathematically rigorous way is almost as important as the problem solving in itself.

>> No.10428827

>>10427987
Precalc 2?

>> No.10428914
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10428914

>>10428827
>>10428332
That's about it, notice how it says certain topics are optional, our final included a simple proof but that one question was worth almost half of the total score. You would receive credit for work only if the final answer was correct, yet an answer without work would get no credit. We weren't introduced to the concept until the week before final review, and the instructor seemed confident it wouldn't be on the exam.

>> No.10428915

>>10427934
Kek ur a retard

>> No.10430520

>>10428028
I wish my CS curriculum was more like that

Luckily I do a double major so I still do enough math

>> No.10430628

>>10428661
Cs majors don't take the same math classes as math majors dumbass, a discrete math class for math majors is going to be miles away in terms of difficulty than the one proposed in a cs curriculum

>> No.10431409

>>10428028
>I don't know what kind of CS you are talking about.
American CS

>> No.10431451

>>10427934
Sounds like you have good work ethic. What happens to a lot of "smart people" is that they don't have good study ethic and get rekd the first time they take calculus.

>> No.10431462

>>10428028
Is that supposed to be impressive? That's the minimum any decent CS degree should teach, is CS in America seriously this bad?

>> No.10431477

>>10431462
Take a look at what American universities teach. Most fields have shitty undergraduate education that only ever finds a way to get worse in order to increase enrollment and graduation rates.

>> No.10431539
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10431539

>>10427934
nice thumbnail idiot

>> No.10431581

>>10428914
You got a C in a 100 level class? oof

>> No.10431628

>>10431477
I see that it's all over the damn place, some only teach Calc I, II, III, others Calc I, II and linear algebra, others Calc I, II and "probability for computer scientists" (whatever that is), what's up with that? I'm doing CS in a mediocre university from a meme third world country and even I had to do calc I, II, vector calc, linear algebra, ODE, numerical analysis, probability theory, mathematical stats and optimization.

I don't even think any of these are impressive, that's the minimum I'd expect from a CS major since you need all of these to do AI, image processing, crypto, advanced algorithms, etc

>> No.10431776

>>10427934
but have you understood it?

doing is one thing, understood it another, I rather understand than solving an equation

>> No.10431901

>>10427934
Taking Honors Calc II right now. We will make it! Yay!

>> No.10431925

Because at least 50% of people in university shouldn't even be there. That's why. Calculus is easy and should be fairly intuitive for people who are above the median IQ level.
A good physics class is much harder than calc.

>> No.10432593

>>10430628
Maybe so in some schools. But any school worth its salt isn't going to dilute their courses and waste energy creating different versions of classes just for cs majors.

>> No.10432621

>>10431776
t. 60% average student

>> No.10432707

>>10427934
those classes are designed for brainlets to be able to pass
i remember at the end of diff eq's i was like "so that's diff eq's huh? i expected worse the way people talked about it"
and the professor looked offended and shot back "well you know i could have made it much harder than this!"

>> No.10433146

>>10427955
>Also all my muscle is in my legs because I'm a runner and biker but my arms are scrawny af. I'm lifting now but dont want to do anything like protein because that will make me too thicc I'm afraid.

Forget the running and biking, and just start lifting anyway. Girls will find you so much sexier.

Anyway, if those are the only 4 courses required for your major, then I think you won't see anything more difficult than calculus II. Differential equations is just boring (unless it's PDE, which is a whole different story) and linear algebra is also easy. Just focus on doing exercises a lot, I don't think these subjects will be very challenging for you if calculus I and II were easy for you. What's your major any way?

>> No.10433904

>>10428089
>>Combinatorics and graph theory (proofs)
>trivial
>t. don't know shit about combinatorics
Don't make stupid claims about things you don't know.

>> No.10433912

>>10427955
>I'm lifting now but dont want to do anything like protein because that will make me too thicc I'm afraid.

Well that's good, but you can't actually believe that you will even approach "too thicc" just because you eat an extra round steak worth of brotein?
I mean, people dedicate their lives to trying to be too thicc and can't do it.

>> No.10433914

>>10428431
Even in the easiest and most pathetic exams at least 1/3 of the people get btfo. I just don't get it.
Do they do this on purpose?

>> No.10433919

>>10428800
>premium
It's cheesy as fuck.

>> No.10434484

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTby_e4-Rhg

>> No.10435340

>>10427934
>Last of all, what do I need to watch out for?
Being an arrogant prick.