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Spot on. All I know is the situation at Berkeley, but I imagine it's similar at other universities. The lower-division math curriculum (particularly intro cal
by jayferd 14y ago
Spot on. All I know is the situation at Berkeley, but I imagine it's similar at other universities. The lower-division math curriculum (particularly intro calculus and linear algebra) is under pressure from a bazillion different departments to cover such a wide range of topics that 90% of the material is useless to 90% of the students.
For example, a friend of mine was a forestry major, and the only reason she needed calculus was for population modeling. She knows exponentials and logistics better than I do! But she had a hell of a time passing calculus because she had trouble with the other 90% of the course. Keep in mind that this is a discipline that until maybe a decade ago required zero math.
Maybe at least at the lower-division level, applied math needs to be a bit more targeted...? But that would require us letting go of the notion that math is intrinsically edifying, and that people "ought to", "must", or "should" know it.
- eshvk 14y agoI think the problem itself comes from Math departments. Typical undergrad math curricula involves throwing a mix of math at students in the hope of training them to get mathematical literacy. From personal experience, I suspect it works because of the pressure and the massive amounts of math you are exposed to over a short period of time. This clearly is not true for people in other disciplines which is why you have these haphazard courses like Linear Algebra and Calculus thrown at them in the hope that they "get math" and also "learn something useful". It is an ugly situation where a lot of people just end up hating math (which considering that their sample size is small is clearly a bad thing to do but then again, they are probably never going to learn statistics to figure that out :).