Hacker News Reader

Comment by ptmcc | Hacker News Reader

I quite like math, but I hated the college-level calc series. I had to struggle to just pull of a B average, even though I thoroughly understood the concepts. I went on to apply calculus and diff eqs in higher level classes quite successfully, where the rote memorization isn't the point.

But those weed-out classes test a bunch of arcane mechanics and memorized formulas and transformations in the most intentionally obtuse exam questions possible. If you don't know the "one weird trick" you're kind of screwed.

Math weed-out classes are a lot like the tech interview problem, but for STEM majors.

View on HN

It's funny because while I don't consider myself "good at math", I'd always learned math by learning the fundamentals, and deriving what I need at exam time, since I find memorizing leads me to (a) go insane with boredom and (b) if I don't understand what I'm memorizing, I might apply it incorrectly without it "looking wrong".

Calc II was a class where it just wasn't possible because there was too much to derive on any given exam. It took me 1/2 way through the course to course-correct and make flashcards and such nonsense. Unfortunately that was the last (non-discrete) math class I took, so I never discovered what happens next.

It's interesting that these classes have a particular character to them, and they are also coincidentally the core math "service" courses for engineering, the hard sciences, and pre-med students. The fun isn't allowed to begin until those kids are gone. Also, the accreditation requirements for those disciplines makes it very hard to change the lower level math curriculum.

To help my kids stay interested in math, I offered them the following promise: "Suspend your judgement until you get a chance to do proofs, because proofs are when math comes alive." One of my kids became a math major.

Ha, I became a math major accidentally when I happened to take a proof based course and math finally came alive for me.

And the worst is that when you apply the "one weird trick" unexpectedly, you thoroughly confuse the graders. (In this particular case, it was an integration problem in which I used a substitution that wasn't taught by the professor.)

I am guessing that people with an aptitude for math ,such as top physicists and mathematicians, just breeze through calc 2. They don't study more than everyone else but rather it just clicks faster.

Yes, I think you’re right. As a mediocre mathematician, I don’t know of anyone in my good-but-not-top PhD program that struggled with computational math. This is the feeling that I got from their relaxed attitude towards TAing those classes. My classmates also had close to 4.0 gpas in undergrad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com