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Math isn't "too hard". It's about grade inflation. When my parents were in school, a 2.5 grade-point average was around the median, and 3.0 was good enough to g

Math isn't "too hard". It's about grade inflation. When my parents were in school, a 2.5 grade-point average was around the median, and 3.0 was good enough to get into graduate school. Math and science courses still give real grades, with Bs and Cs for average work. Liberal arts classes have been inflated at most universities, to the point that getting a C is essentially failure. People get this perception that math is "harder" because of grading skew. Also, with top employers refusing to look at resumes with GPAs below 3.5 (regardless of university, major, etc.) it makes sense that people would gravitate toward the "easier" majors.

thematt 15y ago
My experience has been quite difference, but I suppose it's all relative based on what you're comparing it against. The amount of effort it takes to get an A/B in a liberal arts class and an A/B in a math/science class are lightyears apart. The liberal arts majors I knew would (maybe) do a couple hours of homework a night and party on the weekends. The engineering students would spent most of their nights doing homework or working in the labs, with more of the same on the weekends -- to get an equivalent grade. The classes that STEM majors need to pass are significantly harder than what liberal arts majors are up against and therefore require more work and effort.
- bryanlarsen 15y ago
  It can be the opposite though. With Science, Engineering & Math, it's possible to get a 99 or 100, and isn't that difficult if you know you stuff. And once you know your stuff, you can stop studying because further effort has very steep diminishing returns. On the other hand, it was pretty much impossible to get a grade above 89 in an English class. No essay is perfect, it's always possible to improve an essay, so a perfect grade was never given out. I put in a lot less effort than my friends in humanities and received much better grades than them. Many of my friends in Engineering dropped out, but the ones who didn't received excellent grades.
caseysoftware 15y ago
I don't know that it's grade inflation.. I think it's the fear of being wrong. Look at Moniz (in the article), he bailed on engineering and went to an English/Psych where the classes are "a lot more discussion based." In math, there are right and wrong answers. In physics, there are right and wrong answers. In engineering - where math & science hit the real world - there are "best answers given the requirements" but it's a similar concept. In English & Psychology, not so much. There are points of view, interpretations, theories, speculation, and working models, but there are very few "right answers" and lots of "reasonable interpretations."
- ajross 15y ago
  Isn't that isomorphic to "math is hard" though? I mean, look: math is hard. It takes a lot more mental effort to solve math problems than it does to read books and do research. That's not to say that insight and hard work aren't important in the humanties, but the barrier is lower. It just plain is. If you're taking a class to learn about 16th century west african colonialism (or whatever other "serious" history class you want), you start at the top of the reading list and work your way through. If you hit a concept or fact you're unfamiliar with, you look it up in your other books or wikipedia. At no point in that process do you stop and realize "Crap, I'm stuck." In math (and the numerate sciences more generally), that's the normal state of things. Math is hard. I think we spend too much time lying to people and telling them that it's easy, and far too little time explaining how much fun it is.
- m_myers 15y ago
  Funny, my fear of being wrong is what led me to engineering. I didn't like the writing-based classes because I couldn't tell whether I was right before I let anyone else see my work. I'm trying to get over that now.
- msbarnett 15y ago
  > Look at Moniz (in the article), he bailed on engineering and went to an English/Psych where the classes are "a lot more discussion based." The impression that I got wasn't that he bailed for discussion courses because he was afraid of being wrong, but rather that the discussions in English classes at least gave him some outlet to feel like he was applying what he was learning. There's a very weird death march of lectures for 2-3 years in some engineering programs during which you're expected to cram in a ton of knowledge but given zero opportunity to see how it will be applied in the real world. Compared with my own CS background it looks horrific; if I had been expected to spend my sophomore and junior years doing nothing but sit in lecture halls doing theory courses and "practical" courses in which I memorized syntax for programming languages, or facts about OpenGL, or the ISA of a MIPS CPU, etc without being allowed near a computer to actually build some kind of project using that knowledge, I'd have fucked off into Philosophy or English, too. At least it would have made time for me to make stabs at using what I was learning to do philosophy instead of simply regurgitate facts. But luckily for my future employability, CS isn't so lost to bad pedagogy that it's thrown out most of its practical learning opportunities. My primary take away from this piece, and talking to people who have burned out of physics and engineering programs, has been that a lot of said programs are simply structured in a way almost guaranteed to try the patience of a lot of otherwise bright people who just wanted to feel like they were making progress towards being able to accomplish something more than regurgitate facts on midterms.
deleted 15y ago
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mahyarm 15y ago
Math courses also have much higher workloads. The highest workload classes I had in university were my mathematics courses. Math textbooks and course material are usually pretty horrible too, using concepts that are not usually taught until a year or two ahead. Using 1st year calculus textbooks talking about sets and so on is a failure in course design. Math departments don't like putting Discrete/Fundamentals of Mathematics into the front of most math curriculums when they should if they use textbooks such as that.
ktrgardiner 15y ago
I go to a fairly prestigious engineering school and it works the opposite way here. Math and science grades are always curved. You have no idea what grade you are going to get for the class until you get it. The grades you receive are more often than not more than you've earned. Either, the grading scale is lowered (90 and up is an A, 86-90 is A-, etc.) or your grade is boosted at the end. For example, I got a B in an organic chemistry class when it should have been a C-. On the other hand, every humanities class I've taken, I've gotten the exact grade I have earned.

thematt 15y ago

My experience has been quite difference, but I suppose it's all relative based on what you're comparing it against. The amount of effort it takes to get an A/B in a liberal arts class and an A/B in a math/science class are lightyears apart. The liberal arts majors I knew would (maybe) do a couple hours of homework a night and party on the weekends. The engineering students would spent most of their nights doing homework or working in the labs, with more of the same on the weekends -- to get an equivalent grade. The classes that STEM majors need to pass are significantly harder than what liberal arts majors are up against and therefore require more work and effort.

bryanlarsen 15y ago
It can be the opposite though. With Science, Engineering & Math, it's possible to get a 99 or 100, and isn't that difficult if you know you stuff. And once you know your stuff, you can stop studying because further effort has very steep diminishing returns. On the other hand, it was pretty much impossible to get a grade above 89 in an English class. No essay is perfect, it's always possible to improve an essay, so a perfect grade was never given out. I put in a lot less effort than my friends in humanities and received much better grades than them. Many of my friends in Engineering dropped out, but the ones who didn't received excellent grades.

caseysoftware 15y ago

I don't know that it's grade inflation.. I think it's the fear of being wrong. Look at Moniz (in the article), he bailed on engineering and went to an English/Psych where the classes are "a lot more discussion based." In math, there are right and wrong answers. In physics, there are right and wrong answers. In engineering - where math & science hit the real world - there are "best answers given the requirements" but it's a similar concept. In English & Psychology, not so much. There are points of view, interpretations, theories, speculation, and working models, but there are very few "right answers" and lots of "reasonable interpretations."

ajross 15y ago
Isn't that isomorphic to "math is hard" though? I mean, look: math is hard. It takes a lot more mental effort to solve math problems than it does to read books and do research. That's not to say that insight and hard work aren't important in the humanties, but the barrier is lower. It just plain is. If you're taking a class to learn about 16th century west african colonialism (or whatever other "serious" history class you want), you start at the top of the reading list and work your way through. If you hit a concept or fact you're unfamiliar with, you look it up in your other books or wikipedia. At no point in that process do you stop and realize "Crap, I'm stuck." In math (and the numerate sciences more generally), that's the normal state of things. Math is hard. I think we spend too much time lying to people and telling them that it's easy, and far too little time explaining how much fun it is.
m_myers 15y ago
Funny, my fear of being wrong is what led me to engineering. I didn't like the writing-based classes because I couldn't tell whether I was right before I let anyone else see my work. I'm trying to get over that now.
msbarnett 15y ago
> Look at Moniz (in the article), he bailed on engineering and went to an English/Psych where the classes are "a lot more discussion based." The impression that I got wasn't that he bailed for discussion courses because he was afraid of being wrong, but rather that the discussions in English classes at least gave him some outlet to feel like he was applying what he was learning. There's a very weird death march of lectures for 2-3 years in some engineering programs during which you're expected to cram in a ton of knowledge but given zero opportunity to see how it will be applied in the real world. Compared with my own CS background it looks horrific; if I had been expected to spend my sophomore and junior years doing nothing but sit in lecture halls doing theory courses and "practical" courses in which I memorized syntax for programming languages, or facts about OpenGL, or the ISA of a MIPS CPU, etc without being allowed near a computer to actually build some kind of project using that knowledge, I'd have fucked off into Philosophy or English, too. At least it would have made time for me to make stabs at using what I was learning to do philosophy instead of simply regurgitate facts. But luckily for my future employability, CS isn't so lost to bad pedagogy that it's thrown out most of its practical learning opportunities. My primary take away from this piece, and talking to people who have burned out of physics and engineering programs, has been that a lot of said programs are simply structured in a way almost guaranteed to try the patience of a lot of otherwise bright people who just wanted to feel like they were making progress towards being able to accomplish something more than regurgitate facts on midterms.

deleted 15y ago

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mahyarm 15y ago

Math courses also have much higher workloads. The highest workload classes I had in university were my mathematics courses. Math textbooks and course material are usually pretty horrible too, using concepts that are not usually taught until a year or two ahead. Using 1st year calculus textbooks talking about sets and so on is a failure in course design. Math departments don't like putting Discrete/Fundamentals of Mathematics into the front of most math curriculums when they should if they use textbooks such as that.

ktrgardiner 15y ago

I go to a fairly prestigious engineering school and it works the opposite way here. Math and science grades are always curved. You have no idea what grade you are going to get for the class until you get it. The grades you receive are more often than not more than you've earned. Either, the grading scale is lowered (90 and up is an A, 86-90 is A-, etc.) or your grade is boosted at the end. For example, I got a B in an organic chemistry class when it should have been a C-. On the other hand, every humanities class I've taken, I've gotten the exact grade I have earned.