Math Classes in College

My calculus classes were basically the professor doing example problems all hour. We did get homework, but not review sheets. We didn't review the homework or tests in class, but I'm sure the prof would have answered them during office hours.

The tests were fairly challenging, and all my calc classes had a 2/3 drop/fail rate. That was back before my school cracked down on excessive class dropping, so it may not be such a high rate anymore.

I did well in them by doing tons of practice problems in the week leading up to the test. The test problems were unique problems, but they were allways similar to things we had covered in the lecture and homework.

Of course some math classes are harder than others, I have a statistics class now that is more about vocab than actual number crunching.

 

They'll teach the very general framework of the test questions to you, yes.

 

I got B's in HS and my first two math classes at college. When I had to take calc II and III I got A's. Its all based on the instructor.

 

Just survived college calc. It's extremely fast and there isn't any time for review. Be prepared to learn 2.9 one day and have a test over all of Chapter 2 the following day. My teacher only rewrote the textbook for his notes, making time spent in class generally worthless (but unfortunately, it was mandatory). If you had questions about homework or a test, that was for office hours.

Also, a big college vs. high school difference was that we never had assigned homework. You had your textbook, and you simply had to sit down and do problems until you thought that you had it down.

And as a final warning, be ready to memorize proofs and theorems.

 

I had weekly problem sets in both of my math classes. I think that's fairly standard, so expect to have some sort of assignment every now and then.

 

I'm really glad that I'm taking AP Calc. AB now. I feel like I'm learning all of the material inside and out, and I've been maintaining an A+ grade in the class. My teacher is really awesome too, and she really dedicates herself to teaching her students. I'll probably just repeat Calc. 1 next year in college and hope that class attendance is optional so that I can just show up on test days and ace everything.

 

What a class is like is completely professor dependent. I had one professor who would basically do any hw problem you asked him, and some days we spent the entire class just reviewing previous hw problems. I've also had professors who would basically read straight out of the book, would do the exact examples that the book used, and would never go over hw problems (although I'm sure they did during office hours, but I wouldn't know). For the later one, of course, going to class was completely useless, and I basically learned everything from the book. For the former class, I pretty much learned everything from going to class and didn't use the book as much. But in the end, I did fairly well in each class. So, its all about adapting to each individual class and finding out what works best for each professor. Sometimes your prof's teaching style won't fit your preferred learning style, and you have to be able to figure out another way to succeed in the class. But don't worry, you'll figure all this out when the time comes

 

To add on to his question; were you allowed calculators in your math classes. I am kind of dependent on my ti-89 titanium(It is amazing). I rely on it a little to much, and I've heard that most proffessors wont let you use calculators. Is this true? Please say it isn't so!

 

It depends on the instructor. My calc classes let you use graphing calculators, but my buddy had the same class with a different instructor and they couldn't use calculators.

It think the calculators were capped at the TI-86, but it's been too long for me to be sure.

 

They couldn't use calculators!? Holy crap! Did they have charts on the walls for all the values of sin, cos, and tan? I can't imagine integrating trig functions without my calculator...

 

Memorizing some conversions? But seriously, i don't know how i would survive without the wordpad in my calculator.

 

yeah, not using calculators was a lot of fun, quizzes everyday. Scraped by with a C in calc I and withdrew from Calc II. I still got into med school so owell! It all depends on the school/professor. We had a HUGE drop rate needless to say.

 

You never had to memorize trig integration tables? That was a staple of my BC class.

 

Er... Nope. But I've only been through Calc I, thus far. I'm doing Calc II next semester.

 

I personally enjoyed all of the math classes that I have taken( Calc 1-3, Differential equations).

As some of the other posters mentioned, it depends on the instructor. For calc I, we just had 7 exams(drop 2) and a final worth 30% of our grade. For calc II, we had weekly quizes(best 10)+3 Exams+30% final. For calc III, we have 3 exams + 25% final and we take weekly quizes that can improve your grade if you do well on them. DiffEq we had 3 exams+30% final.

I didn't have any homework assignments. I would recommend that you do all the homework probelms, though. Math is really easy; all you need to do is understand the basics by doing homework and you're set.

 

For calc I-III at least, I was never allowed to use a calculator, but I really didn't need it anyway. There were also no charts for anything, so you really had to know your stuff. But its really not too bad. I used to kinda be scared of math as well, but once you get the hang of it, it all becomes fairly easy and straight forward.

 

I agree math is very easy-with a calculator

 

Does being able to use a calculator really make that much of a difference? I mean you still have to know how to do everything, don't you? But I guess I never had one of those real fancy calculators (or maybe I just didn't know how to use mine to its full potential).

 

Calculators are much more efficient for certain problems. I know if I had to do some of the calc work in my head, it would take at least a page per problem. So yes, they do make it easier. You still have to know WHAT to do, otherwise you won't know what to plug into that handy little device .

 

Actually, there are many situations where that isn't true. You don't have to know what to do if you can stick it in your calculator. There are probably more situations where that's the case than not, in fact. That gets more and more true as you progress.

 

All of the stuff that I've programmed into my Ti-83 this year I could theoretically memorize. However, considering that we're allowed to make use of it, I do just that. I don't think the trig. integration table is THAT bad. Some of them can be a little weird, but if you put it on some time it's very possible.

 

What's the hardest math class?

 

Just because we don't have to do long division doesn't mean we don't know how to anymore. It's definately true for things like trig values though; but if someone does have a job where they use trig functions daily won't they be using a calculator anyways?

 

My calc class wanted the page worth of work. We got 4-6 problems and had an hour to do them. Much of the time I ended up with a page or more worth of work per problem. If we didn't have the work down, having the correct answer was only worth 1 point out of the ten each problem was worth.

 

You're mangling my meaning. I'm not saying that plugging something into a calculator means you don't know how to do it. However, you don't need to know how to manipulate some complex function if you can plug it into your TI-89 and have it spit out an answer.

Your on-the-job argument is totally bogus. There are tons of things that will be functionally useless to you in your professional life that you have to learn anyway. If you want to excel in your classes, you'll play the game and learn the stuff as your professor wants you to.

 

And if you dont want to excel in your classes, you can always play games on your calculator.

 

True story, lol .

 

All true, but it still gets on my nerves... oh well I guess I'll just have to pray that my proffessor allows calculators; but I s'pose calculus never killed anyone... at least I don't think so...

I've never used a TI-89 before; we're only aloud TI-84 Plus'. What's the difference between the two?

 

Haha, why else would they put endless games on there like that?

 

From Wikipedia:

 

You cant compare a ti-84 with a ti-89. A ti-89 is just amazing. It might hurt you, because it literally does everything for you. It can factor, solve, do derivatives, implicit derivatives, tangents, binomial expand, Super Mario world, Megaman, Has engineering programs on it which i dont understand, has It seriously does everything for you. Ti-84 has some niffty programs you can d.l, but ti-89=A in any math class.

 

I used mine pretty frequently in college, but it wasn't necessary very often. It mostly got used for simple calculations, but when you need it to crank out matrix multiplication or some complex integral, it's there.

 

Your college math teacher will more than likely not allow TI-89 or any other calculator that provides formulaic results and/or lets you store text files on tests. Anyway if you rely on these then you won't learn how to do it yourself. If I remember correctly, my math classes allowed scientific calculators with a single line display.

BTW, I thought the hardest math class was Calc III. There is a reason everyone keeps using Trigonometric Integrations as examples of hard problems.

 

Ok a lot of things people saying seems a little far-fetched.

I'm a Math Major who has taken all of the following classes:
Pre-Calc
Calc I, II, & III
Advanced Calc I & II
Differential Equations
Linear & Modern(Abstract) Algebra
& Much More...

And all though there is some dependence on the professor you get, for the most part i've noticed is that you can do good with any professor so long as you practice and understand what's going on.

Highschool Math for me was easy, i never studied and got 80's or higher. My average in highschool math was around 90. In college math you need to study, depending on the class difficulty but i am a 4.0 Math student in college.

As far as calculator allowed, hell i've been using a Ti-84 until i started Calc III then i started with a Ti-89 only because i got it for free. And the professors for the most part don't even pay attention or care. Because the Ti-89 will only give you answers, not the procedures and won't show you the work on how to get to the answer. Professors love seeing work and giving credit where work is deserved, putting down just an answer usually won't get you many points.

 

wow..you guys were allowed to use graphing calculators?

All we were allowed to use were the standard scientific calculators. Some profs didn't even allow the use of calculators. So the TI-89 can evaluate triple integrals? That's pretty sweet...it took forever to evaluate the double/triple integrals during exams, especially the trig ones.

 

Your college math teacher more than likely will not allow on tests TI-89 or any other calculator that provides formulaic results and/or lets you store text files. Anyway if you rely on these then you won't learn how to do it yourself. If I remember correctly, my math classes allowed scientific calculators with a single line display.

BTW, I thought the hardest math class was Calc III. There is a reason everyone keeps using Trigonometric Integrations as examples of hard problems.

 

My math experiences have ranged from very positive to terrible, so here's a quick summation:

Math 127 (Precalculus II): Good class, four exams, and the lowest one was dropped. We had to do proofs, but were forewarned which ones we'd be tested on, so I basically wrote them over and over again, sometimes even using alternate methods, until I felt confident about them. Calculator wasn't that important, didn't help because it was mostly conceptual work.

Stat 491 (Statistics for Sciences): This one, a calculator REALLY helped. All students were allowed to use Excel, Minitab Solutions, a standard equations sheet ripped from the textbook, and any calculator we wanted on exams (which were computerized). I programmed some of the more complicated functions (hypergeometric dist., for some reason wasn't preloaded on my graphing calculator) to save time. Homework counted for 20 percent, which was great.

Math 181 (Calculus I): Horrible experience. About 40 percent of the class failed the first test, after that the professor banned calculators, which he termed "the magic boxes". I got a 30 percent for using the chain rule, because he hadn't gone over it yet, even though I ended up with the correct answer. Ended up dropping, retaking next summer (with different prof.) Calculator didn't really help much here.