hayabusaboston
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Discuss, your preference for one or the other, and why.
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Pure Vs Applied Mathematics (2 Viewers)
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Mature Lamb
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Personally I'm not interested in topology, geometry, number theory, etc. even though it's considered "real" maths.
Shadowdude
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I knew Pure Mathematics was my calling when I was the pretty much the only person in the lecture that didn't complain about learning the nine axioms of vector spaces.
True story.
True story.
Mature Lamb
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That was interesting though
Shadowdude
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Yeah, and the linear transformations stuff too was pretty nice. The MATH1241 'stats' component was rushed and I had zero idea what we were supposed to be doing, so I hope the Higher Stats this semester will help me figure out if it's good. (besides, what would we classify statistics as, here?)
I didn't like the... "solve these differential equations" stuff though.
Mature Lamb
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I fucking love DEs and those modelling questions
I love DE's, well what I've done with them so far.
Carrotsticks
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Shadowdude
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MATH1231/1241? If that's at UNSW... that's Mathematics 1B and the Higher version.
And ah, I see a few DE and modelling lubbers here. You kids have fun with that (because I won't)!
And ah, I see a few DE and modelling lubbers here. You kids have fun with that (because I won't)!
Carrotsticks
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Me too. So far (First Year) doesn't seem too hard. Of course it could get much harder though...
I think the only ones so far in the HSC are...
- Simple Harmonic Motion
- Exponential Growth & Decay
- Rates of change
- Perhaps some rectillinear motion?
What kind of maths is involved at UNSW 1B and Higher?
ie: matrices, partial derivatives etc?
Yeah something like that. But over the holidays I have been self teaching myself some stuff with ODE's and PDE's and I really enjoy it.
UNSW MATH 1B course: Calculus and Linear Algebra (Standard and Higher).
MATH 1B follows on MATH 1A.
Haha - maybe I should get you young fellas to coach me.
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In answer to that question, although most of you people here are in uni whereas I'm a high-school student, I support applied maths because I'm a more practical person rather than a theory person, though perhaps that might change...
Shadowdude
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So lucky I still have my course handbook...
Higher Maths 1B covers basic functions of several variables (sketching surfaces, partial differentiation, tangent planes to surfaces, total differential approximation), integration (trig. integrals, reduction formulae, substitutions, partial fractions), ODEs (separable, linear and second orders with constant co-efficients, solving by change of variable, modelling), Taylor series (Taylor polynomials and series, Taylor's theorem, sequences and series, tests for convergence, power series) and average values of functions, arc length, speed of a moving particle and surface area.
In the algebra section, we cover vector spaces (arithmetic, subspaces, linear combinations and spans, linear independence, bases and dimension, co-ordinate vectors, vector spaces of matrices and real-valued functions and polynomials), linear transformations (kernel, image, rank, nullity, applications, representation of linear maps by matrices, matrix arithmetic and linear maps, one-to-one, onto and invertible linear maps and matrices), eigenvalues and eigenvectors (bases and diagonalisation, applications), and an intro to Probability and Statistics (simple probability, random variables, special distributions, estimation of probability of success).
We covered matrices and what they are in Math 1A.
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largarithmic
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I really haven't done enough applied maths to know, but I really like discrete mathematics (graph theory!) and number theory (and what I've seen of its university extension in abstract algebra). I did a kinda no rigorous course in topology a while ago that was fun but occasionally kinda frustrating, but it was kinda like discrete stuff applied to, well, surfaces. I have a really random slight distaste of calculus and what I've done of analysis (only real analysis) and I don't really know why, don't think anyone else on this forum shares my sentiments.
Of the applied maths I have done though, I really like it. especially lagrangian dynamics - that stuff is just awesome.
Also my dads a psychiatrist but most of his research is basically applied statistics (he specializes in the epidemiology of schizophrenia) and its actually pretty cool - the results at the end in medical terms at least. I get the impression the actual maths he does is decently boring. the big problem though is that most doctors, including the people peer reviewing the journals, are actually pretty innumerate.
Of the applied maths I have done though, I really like it. especially lagrangian dynamics - that stuff is just awesome.
Also my dads a psychiatrist but most of his research is basically applied statistics (he specializes in the epidemiology of schizophrenia) and its actually pretty cool - the results at the end in medical terms at least. I get the impression the actual maths he does is decently boring. the big problem though is that most doctors, including the people peer reviewing the journals, are actually pretty innumerate.
The stats is never really examined anyway, except for probability...
Shadowdude
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Yeah. Simple probability stuff.
I remember we had to draw a tree diagram to get one of the answers for the questions in the Higher Maths exam.
I think one of my friends quipped, "About our exam yesterday, someone asked me what kind of maths we did in it, and then I said, "Well you know those tree diagrams we learnt in Year 7...""