How much math have you taken in school?

[Buffy]

This is of course a science site, so the results will be horridly skewed compared to the general population, but we do have lots of folks who never got very far and students who are still in progress...of course if you have any interesting math stories, go ahead and share! ;)

 

Like Mr. Turtle says, "you know what to do...."

 

I always like a good math solution to any love problem, :)

Buffy

[TheBigDog]

This is of course a science site, so the results will be horridly skewed compared to the general population, but we do have lots of folks who never got very far and students who are still in progress...of course if you have any interesting math stories, go ahead and share! ;)

 

Like Mr. Turtle says, "you know what to do...."

 

I always like a good math solution to any love problem, :)

Buffy

As a High School Senior I signed up for Advanced Algebra and Trigonometry Honors taught by one Mrs Lippitz. I was a terrible student and had gotten through all my math classes by being able to "figure it out" on test day after doing no homework. When I got to AAT Honors I hit the wall on that particular trick working.

 

Poor Mrs Lippitz. She had gone to school with my mom, who was also a math teacher in the district. She had been a student of my grandmother, who had also been a math teacher in that district. Before I was born she helped throw the baby shower. So here I am failing her class. I needed to pass the final exam to pass the class, to have enough credits to pass high school. It was the next to last final exam of the year, morning of the last day of school. I needed a 60% on the final, and I got a 58.6%. Two too many wrong answers. She was so disappointed in me, my mom was so damn embarrassed.

 

I never took another math class until I learned some statistics in Six Sigma Black Belt training for work. And of course the stuff I have picked up here at hypo sort of by osmosis.

 

Bill

[Pyrotex]

In undergrad, whilst getting a BS in physics, I took three semesters of calculus and two of differential equations. Followed by Real Analysis (poorly taught). Later on, and to this day, I feel somewhat cheated. There were other maths that I would need that I was never taught, like matrices, tensors, quaternions, Fourier analysis, & advanced functions. In grad school, I got three more semesters in advanced calculus topics, which I never found a use for. In fact, I didn't understand them even though I aced them. And I audited topology. But by then, I switched majors to Computer Science.

[Turtle]

rats! i thought it was multiple choice!!! i mean choose multiple answers...erhm...pick all that apply. ;) no pigeon holing!! :cheer: so, everything above "advanced stuff" applies, but i never got to diffy q's and foundered (maybe floundered too. :cheer:) after several semesters in calc. :cheer: i then studied in linear algebra, discrete math, and statistics. i take einstein's view to heart, and i never memorize anything i can look up. (except einstein quotes. :cheer:) :) . . . . :xparty:

[freeztar]

In 7th grade, I placed into the "accelerated learning" program for math. In 8th grade, most of my peers were taking pre-algebra while my relatively small class studied college-level algebra. My freshman year of high school, I took Geometry with Sophmores. In my Junior year, I was taking Calculus, and that's when things went south...

 

Like Bill, and likely many others reading this, I always absorbed the math concepts without having to do homework. My brazen attitude was defeated when simply attending class was not enough to keep up my grades in Calculus. I got bumped down to Pre-Calc and took "regular" trig in my senior year. At the time, I could care less, but it's still one of the biggest mistakes of my life that I would love to have the opportunity to change.

 

To get past undergrad prerequisites, I ended up taking two more semesters of pre-calc. I also took a really cool class on cryptography using, mainly, arithmetic codings. I learned lots of cool and cookey math concepts in that class, but unfortunately, memory does not serve me well from 13 years ago and my notes are long gone. ;)

 

I guess that's why I hover around the mathematicas here. :)

 

I'm a strong believer in applicable math. Most of advanced maths is inaccesible to most people because it has no application. This can change. It wasn't too long ago that most people could not count. And as Turtle says, those that can not count, don't.

[Buffy]

rats! i thought it was multiple choice!!! i mean choose multiple answers...erhm...pick all that apply. :eek_big:

If you want me to change your response, just let me know....

no pigeon holing!! :hyper: so, everything above "advanced stuff" applies, but i never got to diffy q's and foundered (maybe floundered too. :hyper:) after several semesters in calc. :hyper:

Normally, most places make you do things in the order listed (picky observers will note that many places separate out Algebra 1 and Algebra 2, and often--as was the case at my high school--put Geometry between the two), and won't let you get to the "higher stuff" unless you've struggled through at least a quarter of college-level Calculus....

 

i then studied in linear algebra, discrete math, and statistics

Bah! That's <extremely_derisive_mathematician_tone>Applied Mathematics</extremely_derisive_mathematician_tone>, not real math... :naughty:

 

Like Bill, and likely many others reading this, I always absorbed the math concepts without having to do homework. My brazen attitude was defeated when simply attending class was not enough to keep up my grades in Calculus.

Ah, the downside of male hubris. :evil:

 

I always attributed my middling grades in math to the fact that the basic teaching sequence of math is based on the philosophy "don't ask why you're learning this, just learn it." I was always waiting for the punch line of why it was important to learn stuff, because quite frankly unless I see the goal, the steps never make sense. I was forever getting to the next class and saying to myself "so *that's* why that was important!" Geometry made no sense until I learned Trig. Trig made no sense until I learned Calculus...and of course Differential Equations never made sense because they don't (heck, they're arguably "applied math" :rolleyes: )!

 

I got bumped down to Pre-Calc and took "regular" trig in my senior year. At the time, I could care less, but it's still one of the biggest mistakes of my life that I would love to have the opportunity to change.

I managed a B+ in Calc as a Junior (I took Geometry and Algebra 2 at the same time, the latter as an independent study so I avoided getting called a nerd....), and between a decent AP Calc score and a test I had to take coming in to College got to jump straight to Differential Equations which almost destroyed my love of math. Fortunately I stuck it out and went on to take a Abstract Algebra and Topology.

 

But of *all* of it, the only stuff I actually have used since school has been the Abstract Algebra: that group theory stuff is incredibly useful in programming. If I ran the curricula, I'd actually put it before Geometry in that silly sequence, because the kind of "numerology" it explains actually seems to come up in real life much more often than anything else...seriously, try dealing with date or time math when you've been through how all those different bases actually work exactly the same way: it's so much easier to see...

 

And as Turtle says, those that can not count, don't.

You can say that again! :cheer:

 

I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally, :phones:

Buffy

[freeztar]

If you want me to change your response, just let me know....

If flunking out of Calc is not the same as "Have taken Calc", then I would like a category for "pre-calc". :cheer:

Normally, most places make you do things in the order listed (picky observers will note that many places separate out Algebra 1 and Algebra 2, and often--as was the case at my high school--put Geometry between the two), and won't let you get to the "higher stuff" unless you've struggled through at least a quarter of college-level Calculus....

Right. :hyper:

Bah! That's <extremely_derisive_mathematician_tone>Applied Mathematics</extremely_derisive_mathematician_tone>, not real math... :naughty:

I love "Bah". :hyper:

Ah, the downside of male hubris. :eek_big:

No comment. :phones: :evil:

I always attributed my middling grades in math to the fact that the basic teaching sequence of math is based on the philosophy "don't ask why you're learning this, just learn it." I was always waiting for the punch line of why it was important to learn stuff, because quite frankly unless I see the goal, the steps never make sense. I was forever getting to the next class and saying to myself "so *that's* why that was important!" Geometry made no sense until I learned Trig. Trig made no sense until I learned Calculus...and of course Differential Equations never made sense because they don't (heck, they're arguably "applied math" :rolleyes: )!

"Approaching Zero" never set well with my penchant for good marks.

 

I managed a B+ in Calc as a Junior (I took Geometry and Algebra 2 at the same time, the latter as an independent study so I avoided getting called a nerd....), and between a decent AP Calc score and a test I had to take coming in to College got to jump straight to Differential Equations which almost destroyed my love of math. Fortunately I stuck it out and went on to take a Abstract Algebra and Topology.

 

Ok, I'll go check out abstract algebra. :hyper:

 

Thanks Buffy, cool topic!

[sanctus]

AS Turtle pointed out. All of them including the last ;-)

[lawcat]

Basic required stuff: Calc 3 and Diff. Eqs. Not a single advanced class, but then again that's for math Ph.D. students.

[sanctus]

Basic required stuff: Calc 3 and Diff. Eqs. Not a single advanced class, but then again that's for math Ph.D. students.

Or theoretical physics students ;-)

[Tormod]

This is embarrassing. I have no idea what math classes I took. Probably not much. :rolleyes:

[Pyrotex]

I have a math story, boys and girls.

 

It seems that once upon a time, in the year 1970 CE, there was this geeky little kid in a wheelchair who decided to change colleges and get his Masters out of state. He didn't know a soul at the new college. None of the dorms were wheelchair accessible. Well, there was one dorm -- the "aggie" dorm, which was inhabited, as you might guess, almost entirely by agriculture students. The concrete block rooms typically had two beds, but that left no room for my wheelchair, so they were good enough to give me a room by myself.

 

Needless, to say, I didn't make many friends in the aggie dorm. The other residents were lucky if they could count to 20 without their toes; they chewed plug tobacco and spit in empty Coca Cola bottles; they had **** all over their boots and tracked it through the dorm. Nobody seemed to mind the latter, except me, because I was the only one who had to roll through it and get it on my hands. I went a few times to the lobby where the TV was, but all they watched was Petticoat Junction and I Love Lucy reruns.

 

First semester, I took Topics in Advanced Calculus. The book was by Hildebrand, who had a reputation as the most "dense" and obfuscatory math teacher in existence. He could start with two assumptions: '1 + 1 = 2'; 'a + 0 = a'; and immediately give 'e^(i pi) = -1' as an "obvious conclusion". The teacher recommended that we form study groups of 3 to 5 students and share our homework and derivations with each other if we wanted any chance in hell of passing the course.

 

Nobody asked me to join their study group. Well, duh! None of them were in my dorm, or wanted to visit it. And I couldn't get into their dorms by myself. Soo....

 

So every evening, I retired to my concrete jail cell, shut the door and crawled onto the bed with my textbook and a new spiral bound notebook, and starting with chapter 1, equation 1, I derived every step, every "obviously..." that mister Hildebrand declared. At the end of the chapter, I solved every problem. The semester plodded on very sloooowly. I filled up that spiral notebook and was halfway through a second one, when the course ended.

 

The teacher warned us that the final would be a killer and would count as half our total grade. None of the problems on the exam would be from problems discussed in class or assigned as homework. Average scores were expected to be around 40% and would be scaled.

 

But the problems looked familiar to me! Perhaps because I worked every exercise in the whole book? It certainly didn't look as hard as deriving mister Hildebrand's theorems. There were, I believe, eight problems for full credit, and an extra-credit problem. The first eight were a snap and took me only an hour. The extra-credit thingie was: using some obscure theorems from the Calculus of Differentials (not Dif.Eq.) that were NOT discussed in class, I had to derive an infinite series of complex numbers that added up to pi. That took me an hour and I had to start over and take several stabs at it before my choice of arbitrary parameters made it all work out. There were still lots of kids in their seats when I left the room.

 

I got 120% on the final, counting the extra-cred problem. The next highest score was 70%.

 

My overall average for the semester was 94%. The next highest average was less than 70%.

 

When I got to the bulletin board where scores were posted, everyone was asking who was the ******* that aced the final? I pushed my way through, saw my score, and said out loud, "I'm the ******* who aced the final. You shoulda let me in your study group when you had the chance. Jerk."

 

I turned around and wheeled away, feeling very vindicated.

[Mercedes Benzene]

I'm taking Multivariable Calculus this semester (having already taken Calc I and II). This is all that's required for my major, and it's all that I'm going to take. :naughty:

 

Some chem majors decide to take Diff. Equations and/or Linear Algebra, but since I don't plan on doing physical chemistry for the rest of my life I figure I will get by just fine with multivariable.

[BrianG]

I didn't take any meth in school!

[Pyrotex]

I didn't take any meth in school!

Good for you!

Hard drugs just screw up your mind and make you say stupid things in class.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Turtle

rats! i thought it was multiple choice!!! i mean choose multiple answers...erhm...pick all that apply. :(

If you want me to change your response, just let me know....

 

just givin' ya the business. i'm good with my click. :D

 

 

i then studied in linear algebra, discrete math, and statistics.

Bah! That's <extremely_derisive_mathematician_tone>Applied Mathematics</extremely_derisive_mathematician_tone>, not real math... :naughty:

 

Buffy

 

:hyper: yes; however i <extremely_defensive_mathematician_tone>Apply </extremely_defensive_mathematician_tone> that to explorations in <extremely_delighted_mathematician_tone>Pure</extremely_delighted_mathematician_tone> mathematics.

 

pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. :phones:

 

[Theory5]

I have taken algebra mostly. This trimester I have to take statistics ugh, I heard it was pretty hard. Last trimester I was averaging a B before the final in college algebra and I got a D+ as my final grade despite having taken practically the same course at a community college last summer :-(

Math just isn't my strong point. I can't seem to grasp the jumps in logic half the time. I am good with formula's, but nothing else.