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/sci/ - Science & Math

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4048353 No.4048353 [Reply] [Original]

Sometimes I do this. Ask a math prof, /sci/.

>> No.4048359

how do i crash one of your classes (assuming it's full) successfully?

>> No.4048357

>>4048353
How old are you?
What are you working on?

>> No.4048360

Did you have any trouble talking before a lecture hall full of faggots when you first started? How long did it take you to get over it? What helped? Etc, etc.

>> No.4048363

What is the ideal music to listen to while doing math?

>> No.4048366

is it possible to learn calculus in a week?

>> No.4048367

>>4048353
Is P in NP?

>> No.4048379

>>4048357

Let's put it this way --- the regular Nintendo came out AFTER I had gotten my PhD.

>>4048359

Why would you ever want to do that? Here's what usually happens: calculus (or statistics, depends on the semester) fills up really, really quickly. But after the first week or so, around 10 students drop out. This means you have a really good chance of actually getting in if you just kind of sit in the class and wait. It has never actually happened where a student has sat in my class waiting to get in and they didn't get in. But my uni is relatively small now, so take this with a grain of salt. For my upper-levels, all you need to do is be moderately interested in the topic and we will see that you get in.

>>4048360

When I started? More like *every time* I do it. Being a professor is not like being a student in a big class. You are responsible. If you mess up, no one can help you and you'll have 100-some kids telling everyone that you made a mistake on something easy. I used to take beta-blockers (which are what some people to do combat stage-fright) but I found that holding a coffee mug in my hand actually works better for some reason.

This is also why some professors power-point their stuff, because it freaks them out not to have everything written down in front of them. True story.

>> No.4048383

>>4048366
Not OP, but yes, it is <span class="math">extremely[/spoiler] possible.

>> No.4048388

>>4048379

What about presentations before your peers? At conferences and whatnot? Did you get used to those, or do you still sweat like a whore in church?

>> No.4048391

>>4048379

I'm having a hard time in Real Analysis. Right now, we're doing Connectedness and going to move onto continuous functions, but the work is just so abstract.

What do you recommend? I'm not failing the course, but I'm used to getting A's. This is the first time I've seen a C on a mathematics exam in about 3 years.

>> No.4048392

>>4048363

This is an interesting question. I don't like listening to classical music (due to some unresolved Father issues, etc.) but this is usually the go-to music for mathematicians. One of my students who was more musically inclined told me about a lot of jazz music which works and some instrumental modern music which is always nice. I was into Brian Eno for a while last year, and I just found a band called Explosions in the Sky which I enjoy quite a bit.

>>4048366

No.

>>4048367

Yes; it is the second letter.

>> No.4048399

>>4048391
switch to engineering

>> No.4048408

>>4048399
Fuck off.

For the record, professor, I did Abstract Algebra and did quite well in it(I received an A). Real Analysis is just tough for me for some odd reason.

>> No.4048412

I'm under the impression that the Analysis courses at my school cover less ground than those of other schools, but I've only been able to ask students it.

Analysis I:
Rigorous development of the key concepts and theorems of differential calculus. Topics include sequences, series, limits, continuity, differentiability, properties of derivatives, and uniform notions of convergence and continuity.

Analysis II:
Rigorous development of the key concepts and theorems of integral calculus. Topics include the Riemann integral and its properties, a restatement of the key concepts of real analysis in the context of metric spaces and function spaces, and an introduction to measure theory and the Lebesgue integral.

Does that seem normal to you?

>> No.4048415

>>4048388

I used to do a lot of talks, and I used to get so sick before them that I would spend about 10 minutes in the bathroom thinking I was going to throw up. The trick for me was just to write literally everything down that I needed to say. When computers became really popular, I made the change to projecting my talks on the board, because that meant less chalk-work which is hard to do when you're really nervous.

Nowadays, I don't present so much, and, if I do, it's on topics that I know extremely well. It's not so much a talk, then, as a workshop where I answer lots of questions. So it's a bit more fun for me.

>>4048408

I'll tell you what I tell my grad students: if you wanted a 4.0, you shouldn't have done mathematics. There are a number of classes that I did not do particularly well in even if I studied. Fortunately, now-a-days, you have a number of good resources: Schaums guides make a great Analysis supplement text, and there are literally dozens of analysis textbooks floating around. If you're doing undergrad work, it might be good to get a second text book and work in both your main and this one. As always, doing a lot of problems is really important.

I'll also note that Abstract Algebra and Analysis have two distinctly different feels to them. Most of my students work in topology [like myself] and so they often struggle with analysis ("who cares about distances!?") but often do wonderfully in algebra and topology and the like. It's unfortunate that most universities require analysis, but most of the techniques done in analysis are the building blocks for the techniques done elsewhere.

>> No.4048422

>>4048412

This seems reasonable. If you're worried, go through Baby Rudin. When I teach undergraduate anaylsis, I usually cover some basic point-set topology [limit points, compact sets, closure, etc.] but this isn't strictly necessary.

>> No.4048427

do you think it's impossible for a female to grasp mathematical concepts the way a male would?

>> No.4048428

are you the only prof in your school who browses 4chan?

>> No.4048430

How the fuck are you supposed to find the tangent space at the identity in a group?

>> No.4048433

>>4048427

Not sure if this is trolling or not, but years ago this was actually a legitimate concern. I actually find that most of my male students are better at algebra and analysis while my female students are better at topology. But this is a relatively small sample size.

Additionally, I find that if guys don't "get" a concept, they're reluctant to ask about it which makes for a lot of problems in the future. Female students, on the other hand, don't have so much of the ego problems that the male students seem to have.

>>4048428

I'm the only one I know that does. As I've said before, though, I don't know why all of you 4channers think your website is so secret. It's in the news constantly. And I'm not talking local news --- New York Times, Fox, CNN, etc. I think it would be surprising if I were the only prof that looks at it from my school.

>> No.4048434

Math major here. I find it more fun to play around with problems from a textbook than to read the textbook.

I feel like most books (admittedly very few) I've read have the author explain too much, when all I really want to do is be given the bare minimum to start solving some puzzles. Does that sound dumb?

While I'd like to continue to study math, I really don't like the idea of going to graduate school for math, because I am not at all interested in going to work in academia and there seems to be little else for someone who studied pure math.

Is it possible to teach myself math to a level that would allow me to understand modern mathematics research? On the one hand, it seems like it should be possible if I just keep working problems.

On the other hand, I worked problems independently all summer and feel like I gained much more when I was writing proofs that I sometimes had to explain to other people in class, and received feedback on from my professors.

>> No.4048440

when was the last time you had sex?
are a lot of math professors socially awkward?

>> No.4048442

Do most math professors curve grades?

>> No.4048445

>>4048430

In a general group? I'm not sure. You'd need to tell me the topology. In a Lie group, (and it's been a bit since I've done this) I would imagine that you take your natural differential operator and do it the same way you would on a smooth manifold.

This actually brings up an interesting question: for those of you who know what Lie Algebras are, does it suffice to know the value of the bracket operators in order to be able to reconstruct the space or the tangent space? I took this a long time ago, but I forget if there are some strange spaces where the bracket doesn't "cover" everything.

>> No.4048448

>>4048440
also have any female students ever offered sex to you in exchange for a higher grade or is that just a porn thing?

>> No.4048462

PROFESSOR PLEASE ANSWER

>> No.4048465

>>4048415
>I'll tell you what I tell my grad students: if you wanted a 4.0, you shouldn't have done mathematics.

I partially agree with you, but most Grad schools want 3.5 GPA + to even be considered. Top 20-30 Grad Schools want 3.6GPA+. Top 10-20 want 3.8+.

My goal is to get into a top 30 grad school; just somewhere respectable and where I can earn a terrific Math Graduate education.

>> No.4048472

>>4048440

I am married, so ---

>>4048442

I had a huge discussion on here at some point about this, but, yes, most professors do. We look bad if all of our students fail. This doesn't apply to upper level classes.

>>4048434

Working problems is usually the best way to go to understand the material from the book. Understanding the chapter \ lecture is fine, but the real meat is in the problems. So doing problems is extremely important.

Having said this, if you're an undergraduate then it may be the case that you haven't taken enough math to get to that "tipping point" where there are no longer lots of problems to work through and where you need to understand the material by sort of doing baby examples and applying what you already know. For example, if you were to read a new paper about some kind of approach to solving some sort of PDE, generally they will not give exercises to work through. But you know this. The point is the following: you need to get in the habit of BOTH being able to understand the "meat" of the arguments and be able to reproduce proofs and such, and you will need to be able to solve problems.

That being said, most modern research is not done via some "problem" which is easy to state --- if you are pure. To even be able to state some of the problems that I worked on, you'd need to have a few math classes under your belt already. This is somewhat similar in the applied field as well.

To sum up: studying by yourself is okay, but unless you're REALLY doing hardcore work reading and doing problems, I would think working on modern problems would be rather difficult. Also, it's difficult to know what open problem are if you aren't in a university.

>> No.4048473

>>4048448
in that vein, have any male students offered sex to you in exchange for higher grades? I guess what I'm wondering is how individual classes are funded?

Seriously, though, what determines whether your department chooses to offer or cancel an elective for which few people may take? Is your school just so big that this isn't an issue?

My school is small and every so often an elective class will be cancelled because only around 4-5 people sign up to take it.

>> No.4048481

>>4048465

Our school is over 3.0gpa, and usually over 3.25gpa is acceptable. But if you are just riding on your GPA, then that's not going to be quite enough to get into a top 30. Most of the top-top schools in this country require, in addition to good grades, research.

It's not that GPA isn't important. But it isn't the be-all-end-all.

Let's also note that getting into a top math grad school isn't the same as getting a great education. A number of the students in top schools already know (for whatever reason) a ton of the material required of them, and they want to start researching. You'll also have professors more interested in their work than in their students. I was told by one of our students who transferred here from a more prestigious school that her advisor would let her have 10 minutes a week with him, and that's it. Here, it's not uncommon for me to spend an hour or two a week with my students.

>> No.4048482

>>4048472
Really? It's been the opposite in my experience - weed out all the students who aren't cut out for math in the introductory courses, then take it easier on the students who've shown they can hack it.

>> No.4048487

>>4048473
Whoops. Wanted to add "I guess what I'm wondering is how individual classes are funded?" to the end of the second paragraph.

Thank you for answering my >>4048434. I guess I'll just wait until I reach that "tipping point" and then consider my options.

>> No.4048492
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4048492

Do you share the view that since the 19 century the majority of prominent mathematicians went from being regular people studying the beauty of the underlying nature of reality to a bunch of psychotic loners obsessed with the abstract?

Also, are we creating mathematics or discovering it?

>> No.4048494

math major here who performs mental finger counts whenever asked for the answer of 6+3 or for any other trivial sum. is this very uncommon?

>> No.4048496

I am monitoring this thread. I wish I caught your older threads.

>> No.4048501

>>4048448
>>4048473

This has never happened to me, but I hear rumors from time to time about it. I would imagine this happens more in the humanities.

For electives, a reading course had no more than 2 students, and a class is not offered if less than 4 students want to take it UNLESS there are 3 students and at least one of them is a second or third year who needs the course to complete his or her coursework.

What usually happens is, all the profs say what classes they'd like to do as a topics class [if they aren't teaching some other high-level] and the students sign up in the commons room to which classes they'd like to take. Then we offer only those which have more than 3 signatures. The class is allowed to happen if at least 4 people register for it by the deadline.

>>4048482

For grad classes this is true --- I don't think I've given less than a B in a grad class in a while. For higher-level undergrad courses it is necessary to grade fairly or else there can be a lot of drama. If you give everyone A's, then the top kids in the class get angry because they put a lot more work in than the bottom kids but got the same grade. Trust me, when I started teaching I wanted to give everyone in analysis an A for effort --- it just does not work out nicely if you do this.

>> No.4048503

Yo mathprof

econ major here

I have done quite a bit of math, for math not even being a minor, but I got a B+ in calc I, A- in calc II, C+ in intermediate calc I, and B- in intermediate calc II.

I'm now doing analysis I, which has only 30 students in it, only section, and i'm sitting at an A. The grad student girl beside me is mad jelly. Is it normal to be sub-par in calculus but begin to excel in upper level math?

Also, I got a C in Mathematical Statistics II, in a summer class, while taking LA II at the same time. Should I take further stats or cut my losses?

(I want to go to econ grad school)

>> No.4048509

>>4048492

Yes. There is no better way to put it than that.

Some of us try to tell others that our subject is beautiful and pure and such, but, ultimately, 95% of what I do is manipulating definitions and working cases that would never (COULD never) appear in the real world. The remaining 5% is why I continue doing what I'm doing.

>>4048494

Arithmetic is just symbolic manipulation. Some of us are better at it than others. It is not required to be amazing at it if you're going to be a pure mathematician.

>> No.4048510

Do you think it's okay to "cheat" on homework assignments?

My analysis prof is reusing all his homework assignments from last year, and I know a few people, myself additionally, who has the solutions.

I always write the solutions in an original way, and I do extra problems all the time to make sure I learn the material. I take my time and try to solve it without assistance at first. But yeah..... How bad is this?

>> No.4048512

Just wanted to say thanks for posting. I really love these threads and I find them far more interesting that the regular /sci/ fare.

>> No.4048518

>>4048503

I am not at all in a position to recommend things for economics students, but I will say that Calculus requires a completely different skill set than Analysis does. I'm assuming your analysis class is with-proofs.

Also, it's a little strange that there's a grad-undergrad mixed section of analysis anywhere. I would never allow a grad student to take undergrad analysis --- they'd have to tough it out!

>> No.4048525

how do you deal with know-it-all students?

>> No.4048527

>>4048510

I'm not going to assume you're a baby; you should know what's good for you. The point of homework is to measure how well you know material and to keep you current in the class. If you already know the material well enough, then you shouldn't need to cheat on the homework.

Having said this, it isn't the worst thing in the world. But it may lead to laziness if you are not careful. It is very easy to say you understand the material when it's laid out in front of you, but it's different entirely when it is not ---

>>4048512

Thank you. I always enjoy those threads with the pictures that are like, "What I studied. What I expected. What I got." My wife enjoys those quite a bit, too.