university maths difficulty (1 Viewer)

[underthesun]

Just out of some interest, how hard is university maths compared to high school maths? And if someone could tell me how hard the electives of UNSW maths is, especially for courses like software engineering (which im most likely to end up in)...

Right now, this seemed to be the most perfect forum to ask this question. or not..

cheers

 

[evilc]

well, i did the normal level first year maths as part of my engineering degree at newcastle and it wasn't that hard at all i got 93 first semester and 91 second semester, i only did 3u at school (E4)
you should do the advanced maths courses if it doesnt clash with anything, i would have but it clashed with a core engineering subject wogboy or flyin' would be able to give you a perspective of UNSW and macq's first year maths diffuculties.

 

[Lazarus]

It's harder, obviously, but not impossibly so. It's usually not very difficult to keep up if you attend all of your lectures and tutes. They also have different streams (e.g. "higher mathematics") to cater for students of all abilities. I managed distinctions for all of my first-year advanced maths subjects, and I'd only done Extension 1 in high school (46/50).

Don't know anything about the electives, sorry.

 

[turtle_2468]

Hey underthesun,
I was planning to answer this and had an answer all written down just before my house had a power failure, so here goes again (that was before you sent me a pm, mind you )
As laz said, Maths 1A and 1B are compulsory for UNSW science/eng ppl. It's not too hard, just make sure you don't fall too far behind (some people were trying to learn the whole course in 2 weeks, and that's a hard ask )
Electives? I can tell you about the ones I know...
Discrete mathematics: Comp sci does this as compulsory first year, everyone else does it second year. Quite interesting, about modulo arithmetic, set theory, "formalising" what you intuitively know about subjects. Recommended, as it's quite logic-based.

Second year courses: You get to choose stuff like "several variable calculus" and "linear algebra", as well as "analysis". it gets a lot harder than high school maths obviously because you build on that stuff, but since quite a lot of people doing science or engineering do those courses (esp several variable I think) then they aren't overly difficult, esp if you take the normal as opposed to the advanced stream (don't worry about that for the time being for second year courses, you'll know which one you want to take at that time ) Umm... yeah. I guess it's the same as any other course, a bit more logic involved, which means that you actually have to understand the stuff and regurgitation works a lot less well.

Third year courses: I don't think you get a chance to do it, but if you do end up doing pure maths it's interesting

In summary: First and second year maths were designed that ppl from other courses can take it without too much trouble, and it does move up a level but nothing you can't handle (considering you've done ok in 4 unit, a little bit of effort and you can probably keep up).

 

[KeypadSDM]

Go the USyd TSP - 3rd year courses in year 1!

 

[underthesun]

Thanks for the inputs people , much appreciated.

Hey turtle, do you think it'll be possible to learn discrete mathematics now by myself? I actually might do that to kill time, and to achieve the distinction average i need for transfer (to comb. law hopefully, i fell short on UAI for that ).

 

[abdooooo!!!]

Originally posted by KeypadSDM
Go the USyd TSP - 3rd year courses in year 1!

what do you do in year 2? TSP is cool...

 

[BlackJack]

Originally posted by KeypadSDM
Go the USyd TSP - 3rd year courses in year 1!

Yes! Caught the last Terry Gagen lecture in MATH3009 Number theory; Hooray for TSP!

Yeah um... you can just do 2nd year math in 2nd year.
I mean, it's also possible to do 2nd year courses in 1st year, but 3rd year courses are divided into smaller cedit points.

underthesun:
Of course. But then from the usyd point of view our discrete is conceptually simple.

 

[KeypadSDM]

Originally posted by BlackJack
Yes! Caught the last Terry Gagen lecture in MATH3009 Number theory; Hooray for TSP!

I am so freakin' envious. WHY DID HE HAVE TO RETIRE!?!?!?!

Meh, I got 2 weeks of number theory lectures (10 lectures) at NMSS 2003.

 

[xiao1985]

Originally posted by KeypadSDM
I am so freakin' envious. WHY DID HE HAVE TO RETIRE!?!?!?!

Meh, I got 2 weeks of number theory lectures (10 lectures) at NMSS 2003.

lolz, yea... pity we didn't get reinvited.... sigh~~~ those wonderful dayz...

 

[turtle_2468]

Hmm. Lots of statements!
1) I still don't like terry gagen.
2) Hooray for TSP (unofficially) at UNSW - 3rd year courses for 1st year students
(I'm just making the point that you can do the same at UNSW... admittedly only a few ppl do it though)
3) underthesun: learning discrete maths by yourself is, I guess, doable, but not for the faint-hearted. But I'm willing to help over email (and if you're REALLY stuck by ph) if you want to do it...
4) Regarding what you do in 2nd year:

in both UNSW and USyd there are heaps and heaps of 3rd year courses, and also some honours courses. Although you can do 3rd year courses in first year, usually a lot of them have prerequisites (I'm thinking analysis/algebra here for instance), and so in TSP you end up doing courses like "logic and computability" (something a friend did this year). Anyway, there's enough there to fill up at least 2 years of maths time... so never fear, lots of stuff to do

 

[underthesun]

i see, thanks for the inputs. And turtle, well, if i ever see you in unsw, i can ask you .

horray! another personal Jesus

 

[Dumbarse]

i do maths at uni, the maths is harder than high skool, not alot harder to grasp concepts and stuff but they go throught it fast

for an example, complex numbers at skool we did in about a month, ... at uni we did in one 2 hour lecture,

 

[maniacguy]

Tezza retired? (can't get the backwards 'E' or upside-down 'A' in this without effort, sorry. I was the one who got caught by that joke at NMSS2001, so I'm not likely to forget it)

Yes, hooray for TSP @ UNSW, aka 'Ignore Commerce Faculty Policy AND Get Away With It To Maximum Possible Extent'

Why should you come to UNSW instead of Sydney Uni?
If you want to do Honours in Pure Mathematics (and let's face it, who doesn't, of the people seriously thinking of doing maths in the future? ), then UNSW makes a point of offering a mix of Analysis, Algebra and other areas of interest (e.g. Mathematical Physics, Computational Mathematics, etc.)

At USyd in 2004, of the eight subjects on offer, exactly ONE is Analysis based, and the others are all hard-core Algebra (or not so hard-core, but definitely algebra-centric!!). You tell me where the variety is.

Of course, if you really want to do Algebra all your live long days, then feel free to turn up to USyd. But if you like the analysis from the first few years, it's your own fault!

 

[KeypadSDM]

Originally posted by maniacguy
Of course, if you really want to do Algebra all your live long days, then feel free to turn up to USyd. But if you like the analysis from the first few years, it's your own fault!

Yeah, but you can do TSP stuff, can't you?

Anyway, we need the number theory algebra skills. We're way ahead of the game geometry wise, why not focus a bit on the NT?

 

[maniacguy]

Originally posted by KeypadSDM
Yeah, but you can do TSP stuff, can't you?

Anyway, we need the number theory algebra skills. We're way ahead of the game geometry wise, why not focus a bit on the NT?

Yes, we still can do TSP stuff.
My point was that you don't get much of a choice in terms of doing anything other than algebra - if you wanted to do analysis, or mathematical physics, or something like that then you'd be stuffed. Number theory can be considered either algebra or analysis depending on how it's taught. We get that choice.

And your statistics department FORCES people to do subjects from Pure/Applied or from UNSW, which is an interesting way to go about it... (not that this is necessarily a bad thing - it at least ensures exploration of horizons)