My success with math in high school (aced the calculus AP test) motivated me to major in math in college. My “oh fuuuuuuuuuck” moment occurred in the fall of my sophomore year when I realized that my time with computational math had ended and I would be doing proofs for the rest of college. I did not get a degree in math.
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I had to take all sorts of calculus and differential equations, but then was told “after that, you start to get into higher levels of math”. Higher levels? What the fuck have I been taking? “Baby math”. Nice talking to you.
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Yeah, calculus II and DifEq were my freshman year. Next up was linear algebra. The sinking feeling I had in that very first class still haunts me.
Remember the controversy when a talking Barbie doll said “Math is hard”?
My buddy the math major walked by the TV when that story was being broadcast.
He had just taken a Differential Equations test.
Without looking up he just kept walking and said “she’s right.”
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I had to take three semesters of calculus, then DiffEQ. I think I took them my junior and second junior years. I didn’t get any smarter, so it probably didn’t matter when I took them.
OK thanks, that’s helpful.
Holy cow. I was talking about HS math. I would not have survived 10 seconds in the college courses y’all are talking about.
All I think is thank God for the curve in Micro and Macro Economics. Thank God.
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I took Microeconomics my first semester at UT (after barely surviving it in HS) and was as happy with that B as I was about any grade I made the next four years.
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Economists’ insistence on reversing the role of independent and dependent axes in graphs always infuriated me so much that I couldn’t pay attention to anything else.
OK, well my high school math path from 9th to 12th grade was: Intro to Algebra, Algebra I (fail), Algebra I (pass) and Geometry. There was one semester in Geometry class that my report card grade was 16. Sixteen. Of course, that was after I found out I didn’t need it to graduate (I took it as an elective thinking I did), so that made me not care too much until my mom saw my grade and made sure I did care.
Since then (graduated in 84) I’ve acquired better math skills but not anything approaching DiffEQ. My geometry skills start and stop at mitering cuts. I keep thinking I could learn a lot now, being older and smarter, but I have other things to learn ahead of math. Gotta admit though that math seems awfully fun, puzzle solving and all.
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Calculus & Linear Algebra were a breeze. Then came DiffEQ. Then came the army and a “major” change. No more math since then.
I know a lot about British and American poetry and 19th century novels.
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Of you want to know the rules of counterpoint and how Mozart expanded beyond them talk to me.
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Yeah, I think I have that covered right now.
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I took all the math I could through high school, geography was absurdly easy for me (in no small part thanks to a great teacher) and even calculus was fun and easy (no thanks to a teacher with whom I seldom saw eye to eye). It always felt like the same part of my brain was engaged for math as it was for language learning. I’ve since learned that math and language are thought to be processed in different parts of the brain, but to me it always felt very similar and similarly easy.
I took lots of economics in college and liked it all quite a bit. Sadly, I never took any college math. Although I enjoyed everything in high school, I suspect had I taken the same sort of college math that all the rest of you goons seem to have taken I would have fared similarly. And despite the fact that I possess a BS degree (apt, I know), I never took anything resembling a science course other than economics. In fact, my ignorance of basic science - biology, chemistry, etc. - would probably be shocking to most of you. Remember that scene in Sherlock when he confesses that he doesn’t know that the earth revolves around the sun (or maybe it was the moon around the earth)? It’s not quite that bad, but it’s bad.
How about spelling?
Since I majored in physics I took all the math major stuff until about junior year and then physics courses teaches you the math you need to do physics and you avoid the number theory stuff. In grad school, I used to do 10 page derivations for my field theory course, those were good fun.
With all the machine learning stuff people do these days, I wish I had taken more (or any) statistics.
I was pushed into higher math classes in HS. I did poorly in all except Geometry. They kept telling me you will need this class in college. For my liberal arts degree, I needed one math class. College Algebra. I waited till my last quarter of my Jr year to take freshman Algebra. Something had clicked in my brain between HS & College. I aced that class- of course the fact that I was dating a math education major at that time might have helped some.
Best part of that class was that Frank Thomas (The Big Hurt) was in there. He was a nice guy. Appeared to take the class seriously.
I did okay in high school geometry, thanks to a near sighted teacher and the girl in the desk in front of me that let me copy her answers.