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> but doing very well in the major courses that used the same math My school's EE department offered a few math classes (presumably because the EE professors
by ythl 10y ago
> but doing very well in the major courses that used the same math
My school's EE department offered a few math classes (presumably because the EE professors were exasperated with the low level of understanding students were showing with important math concepts). The math classes I took from my Electrical Engineering professors were infinitely more valuable and interesting to me than the equivalent math classes I took from the Math department.
In my EE department math classes, I was encouraged to use any tools at my disposal to solve the problems (TI-89, Wolfram Alpha, Matlab, etc.), and the problems were always very real, so I knew exactly why I was learning what I was learning and how it applied to solving real problems.
In my Math department classes, we had to solve everything by hand, the professors were overly concerned with semantics, and the problems were often very abstract and hard to wrap your mind around.
- yareally 10y agoYeah, we weren't allowed to use graphing calculators in university Math Department courses either. However, Physics and Computer Science & Engineering courses it was okay to use them. It was sort of strange though, you could take the same math courses at the local community college that allowed you to use a graphing calculator and transfer them to the university without an issue. I took a few there and enjoyed the classes much more, since they were taught by experienced teachers and not TAs.
- qihqi 10y agoTo be fair math classes from MATH departments usually have only simple numeric calculations involved, the answer is usually small number fractions combined with pi/e/squareroot of 2 (actually half of time is just 0 or 1). The goal is to force you use identities and manipulate algebraic expressions instead of typing a long long formula into the calculator.
- vonmoltke 10y agoThat is more representative of what I got in my engineering classes. The math classes used problems where it was easy to make non-obvious errors.