Uni maths (1 Viewer)

[cutemouse]

Hello everyone,

I've heard that in the 1st or so week of uni for Engineering you do 4U maths.

Which topics would there be an overall focus on?

Cheers

 

[khorne]

complex numbers/vectors, mechanics, integration

 

[cutemouse]

complex numbers/vectors, mechanics, integration

Thanks... How disadvantaged would one be if they didn't do 4U maths?

I'm asking cos I may be teaching a friend elements of 4U maths for Engineering before uni starts. He only did 3U. So you reckon I should just disregard Conics, volumes and harder 3U?

Cheers

 

[LordPc]

Thanks... How disadvantaged would one be if they didn't do 4U maths?

I'm asking cos I may be teaching a friend elements of 4U maths for Engineering before uni starts. He only did 3U. So you reckon I should just disregard Conics, volumes and harder 3U?

Cheers

not very. universities are well aware that a large number of students have not done 4u maths and so they teach it as part of the course, usually at the start of the course.

i dont recall conics or volumes in 1st year maths

 

[solomarc20]

Ditch conics, it doesn't come up anywhere in the first year. Volumes of revolution come up, so don't discount teaching it. You may also want to suggest to your friend to start looking at matrices. It is quite a large part of 1st year maths.

Also, people who don't do 4U maths can be disadvantaged. This is usually because unis sometimes offer an advanced course to 4U students, and not all choose to take it. However, There are topics in 1st year maths which 4U people would not have come across (eg L'Hopital's Rule, Taylor Polynomials, graphing surfaces), so if your friend is dedicated, then i'm sure it will not be a problem.

 

[Iruka]

Don't be surprised if you never see conics again in your entire university career.

Complex numbers would probably be a good place to start - although they will go over the 4u complex numbers (and more) in the first few weeks of uni.

Going over the extra integration in 4u would probably also be useful - integration by parts, partial fractions, trig substitutions, reduction formulas and so on.

 

[cutemouse]

Thanks all for your advice.

L'Hopital's Rule

Our teacher taught us this. Isn't it when you get a limit where the result is mathematically indeterminable, you can differentiate the numerator and denominator in terms of the variable of the limit and it works out? (eg. lim x-->0 sinx/x)