for what it's worth, if you're memorizing rather than learning the small handful of tricks that you need to do the trig integrals, you've missed the point. Small handful? We weren't told that there are a small handful of tricks for doing trig integrals. We just had the various methods thrown at us with the expectation that we would memorize.
Could you tell me about this "small handful"? I know there's a small handful needed to do trig derivatives, but I've no idea what it is for integrals.
It hasn't changed. CS majors at my school have to take a foreign language through intermediate (meaning: 4 semesters worth). Of course, in our case it's a requirement of the ENTIRE College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
i suspect that this is what you're running into: the combination of people actually expecting you to perform well (i.e. at a far higher level than what high school expected) and no longer being able to slide by without putting effort into the classes. Thank YOU for demonstrating the Standard T.A. Attitude: "It's the undergrad's fault. It's always the undergrad's fault." I aced Calculus 1 but am now not doing so well in Calculus 2. What's the difference? Calc 2 seems to consist of much more memorization at the beginning (I despise trigonometric integrations and substitutions for exactly this reason). Later on we do calculus of sequences and series, Taylor series, approximation of functions by a polynomial... That stuff should go a bit easier on me.
Also, the graders are bitches. I lost points on my last exam for writing INTEGRAL(f'(g(x))g'(x)) dx = f(g(x)) instead of doing the Substitution Rule out in full, even though I got the right answer (hence partial credit) and identified the correct u and du as g(x) and g'(x) (with f(x) of course being the same function as f(u) would be). I thought we left this kind of rote bullshit behind in high school!
honestly, i'm surprised you're getting away with so little math and science. we were required to do calc1-3, discrete math 1, linear algebra 1, prob and stats for engineers (what would have been two semesters in the math department crammed into one, with a sadist of a prof), and numerical methods. we also had 3 semester of lab science, including at least 1 sequence (i did chem1-2 and bio1). this doesn't cover the very mathy classes like formal methods and models, intro. digital logic, and algorithms. i actually ended up doing quite a bit more than that. I was only listing classes at the 100 and 200 level. Once we hit 300s we start getting choices such as:
"Operating Systems, Algorithms, Advanced Architecture, Compilers and Formal Languages, and Databases: choose 3"
And that doesn't even start on our Comp Sci or Math electives, which amount to: "take any 300 or 400 level CS/Math class you want".
Actually, I hate my math courses because the attitude of the Mathematics department here towards undergrads is: "Make the courses hard enough that 1/3 of the class fails, the rest get discouraged, they all change majors, and we can get back to what's really important: our research."
Or you could, at the very least, make the coursework not suck. I'm in a computer science major and I don't think I'll have an in-major Comp Sci or Mathematics course NOT taught as a weed-out course until I hit 300 levels next year.
This is why Americans don't take science or math. Foreigners from India or China have been prepared by their crappy education systems to accept the fact that freshman and sophomore undergraduate students are treated as the bitches of the departments. Eastern Europeans went through school systems that make many of those shitty low-level courses entirely unnecessary.
Americans didn't receive good enough high school to skip past the horrible courses, but were raised to expect quality for our money. Why should we pay extra lab fees and per-credit tuition to be treated as the most utterly lowlife scum of our department for two years while our friends in the humanities enjoy free-flowing beer and easy-going women?
That said, I'm still a Comp Sci in a serious department. It's what I love.
Since you made the detailed posting, I'll respond to you.
At least where I take Comp Sci, the *requirements* for all Comp. Sci majors are:
Calc 1-2 Calc 3 or Stats 1 Discrete Math Linear Algebra Physics 1 Bio 1 Physics or Bio 2
That's just the general-ed science requirements combined with our curriculum's math requirements. We also have to take 2 or 3 or so other math courses at the 200 level or above for the Computer Science major. We take plenty of math in our major, but Real Analysis and vector calculus are optional courses for fulfilling that advanced math requirement. After my Comp Sci major I'll be able to do that physics engine For Sure. My advisors never tire of telling us Comp Scis how little additional effort we need to pick up a minor or double-major in Mathematics.
Now, if I had the choice I'd make a couple of changes here. One, I'd move a couple of courses from that first list above into the "take 5 of these courses" list and let students select a bit more (for example, I'd like to take number theory for cryptography).
Secondly, I would stop teaching these courses to the Comp Sci kids with the same weed-out intensity with which they're taught to the math majors. At the moment Computer Science majors take our first math courses with the math majors, and our university's math department is... well... horrible at teaching. Their idea of teaching what are apparently the foundations of college math is: send some foreigner grad student or post-doc with a horrible accent to teach lecture sections which consist of "throw math at them and see if it sticks". Then they test us as hard as they damn can.
So here's my real demand: either teach us the essential math WELL and don't purposely fail half the class on tests (last exam there was a problem that precisely 2 people out of ~130 in the course got full credit for), or make those hellish courses optional, perhaps mandating them as part of certain concentrations within Comp Sci (such as graphics, AI, systems, languages, etc). It's only fair to us students not to add a super-senior year full of repeating math courses we failed the first time 'round due to horrible teaching and weed-out grading.
Oh shut the fuck up. Back in my day we had to, by hand, code in fully linked hex code by carving letters forming the gematria of the hex for our program into stone tablets, putting them into a huge machine-ark made of cedar and gold and finally hope to G-d that our program would do something more than sit there being heavy!
And this was while wandering in the desert subsisting on tiny bread crumbs that blew in on the wind, mind you. Get off my damned lawn!
Yes, but specifically why do Computer Scientists need Calculus 1-4 and Physics 1-2 when the actual topics with relevance to computing in those respective fields would be {Discrete Math, Symbolic Logic, Set Theory} and some basic electrical engineering material.
Especially when the aforementioned calculus and physics courses are often taught as in-major weeder courses by their respective departments, and the Comp. Sci's therefore get thrown into someone else's weeder courses
Sir! I challenge you sir, I challenge you to come up one with any woman, no; one single human being, who is as interesting, in depth, challenging and beautiful as the General Theory of Relativity. Oh my dear God, you have no idea how wonderful a woman your mother is, do you?
We have the proper neural-nets installed, but nobody gives us any input to train the things on! We're just supposed to throw our completely unconfigured AI software into the wild and have it succeed... how?
Hopefully they'll get over the fixation in time, before a random mix of computer virii and malware "mate" and produce a sentient rootkit that takes over the internet. (I'd estimate we've got 10 more years before this is going to happen) Well I dunSHUB-INTERNET LAUGHS AT YOUR PUNY HUMAN MIND'S INABILITY TO COMPREHEND THE TRUTH.no, it'll probably take a pretty damn long time.
I acknowledge that the Palestinians don't exactly have well-trained, high-tech military forces in the way of Israel or the USA. I acknowledge that they consider the Occupied Territories (AT MINIMUM) to be their rightful homeland.
But this doesn't mean that firing Qassam rockets (which are technically impossible to aim, and therefore of no legitimate military use) or blowing up nightclubs is moral. Hamas, Fatah, and especially Hizballah have all shown themselves able to conduct strikes specifically on Israeli military targets (witness the instigation of the Second Lebanon War) when they want to. But they don't restrict themselves to such actions. Why?
Because Islamists hold the rest of the world, especially the portion fighting against Islamists, to a higher moral standard than that to which they hold themselves. Which is one of the definitions of "bitchy".
Hey, you don't find me supporting the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. We were supposed to have caught Osama Bin Laden and brought him to trial like the criminal he is YEARS AGO!
And don't even get me started on the sheer boneheadedness and immorality of invading Iraq. And PLEASE DEAR GOD let's not invade Iran next. I know some Persians. They're good people. In (a little-known fact), the Persians are more or less on the side of civilization, on the side of not fucking up other people. They just have a crap government that wants to make itself a regional power by sponsoring bitchy, terrorist Arabs who would normally earn nothing more than a sneer from Iran or Persians (Persians have a long-running ethnic dislike of Arabs that not even Islamism can paper over).
That's just how the mujahideen think. When they play dirty, it's the for the greater glory of Allah. When someone else manages a clean kill on them, it's time for those bullies to start playing fair! Perfect example: Palestine. No, I mean it. Apparently when the Palestinians blow up a nightclub it's "resisting occupation", but when Israelis assassinate a Hamas leader it's time for an investigation into human rights violations.
Slashdot Mirror
Could you tell me about this "small handful"? I know there's a small handful needed to do trig derivatives, but I've no idea what it is for integrals.
I said hex. Do you kids not know what that is any more?
It hasn't changed. CS majors at my school have to take a foreign language through intermediate (meaning: 4 semesters worth). Of course, in our case it's a requirement of the ENTIRE College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
Also, the graders are bitches. I lost points on my last exam for writing INTEGRAL(f'(g(x))g'(x)) dx = f(g(x)) instead of doing the Substitution Rule out in full, even though I got the right answer (hence partial credit) and identified the correct u and du as g(x) and g'(x) (with f(x) of course being the same function as f(u) would be). I thought we left this kind of rote bullshit behind in high school! honestly, i'm surprised you're getting away with so little math and science. we were required to do calc1-3, discrete math 1, linear algebra 1, prob and stats for engineers (what would have been two semesters in the math department crammed into one, with a sadist of a prof), and numerical methods. we also had 3 semester of lab science, including at least 1 sequence (i did chem1-2 and bio1). this doesn't cover the very mathy classes like formal methods and models, intro. digital logic, and algorithms. i actually ended up doing quite a bit more than that. I was only listing classes at the 100 and 200 level. Once we hit 300s we start getting choices such as:
"Operating Systems, Algorithms, Advanced Architecture, Compilers and Formal Languages, and Databases: choose 3"
And that doesn't even start on our Comp Sci or Math electives, which amount to: "take any 300 or 400 level CS/Math class you want".
Actually, I think the only reason we call it a science is because if we called it "applied magic" nobody would respect us.
Actually, I hate my math courses because the attitude of the Mathematics department here towards undergrads is: "Make the courses hard enough that 1/3 of the class fails, the rest get discouraged, they all change majors, and we can get back to what's really important: our research."
Or you could, at the very least, make the coursework not suck. I'm in a computer science major and I don't think I'll have an in-major Comp Sci or Mathematics course NOT taught as a weed-out course until I hit 300 levels next year.
This is why Americans don't take science or math. Foreigners from India or China have been prepared by their crappy education systems to accept the fact that freshman and sophomore undergraduate students are treated as the bitches of the departments. Eastern Europeans went through school systems that make many of those shitty low-level courses entirely unnecessary.
Americans didn't receive good enough high school to skip past the horrible courses, but were raised to expect quality for our money. Why should we pay extra lab fees and per-credit tuition to be treated as the most utterly lowlife scum of our department for two years while our friends in the humanities enjoy free-flowing beer and easy-going women?
That said, I'm still a Comp Sci in a serious department. It's what I love.
Actually, I would make one of those changes or the other, not necessarily both.
Since you made the detailed posting, I'll respond to you.
At least where I take Comp Sci, the *requirements* for all Comp. Sci majors are:
Calc 1-2
Calc 3 or Stats 1
Discrete Math
Linear Algebra
Physics 1
Bio 1
Physics or Bio 2
That's just the general-ed science requirements combined with our curriculum's math requirements. We also have to take 2 or 3 or so other math courses at the 200 level or above for the Computer Science major. We take plenty of math in our major, but Real Analysis and vector calculus are optional courses for fulfilling that advanced math requirement. After my Comp Sci major I'll be able to do that physics engine For Sure. My advisors never tire of telling us Comp Scis how little additional effort we need to pick up a minor or double-major in Mathematics.
Now, if I had the choice I'd make a couple of changes here. One, I'd move a couple of courses from that first list above into the "take 5 of these courses" list and let students select a bit more (for example, I'd like to take number theory for cryptography).
Secondly, I would stop teaching these courses to the Comp Sci kids with the same weed-out intensity with which they're taught to the math majors. At the moment Computer Science majors take our first math courses with the math majors, and our university's math department is... well... horrible at teaching. Their idea of teaching what are apparently the foundations of college math is: send some foreigner grad student or post-doc with a horrible accent to teach lecture sections which consist of "throw math at them and see if it sticks". Then they test us as hard as they damn can.
So here's my real demand: either teach us the essential math WELL and don't purposely fail half the class on tests (last exam there was a problem that precisely 2 people out of ~130 in the course got full credit for), or make those hellish courses optional, perhaps mandating them as part of certain concentrations within Comp Sci (such as graphics, AI, systems, languages, etc). It's only fair to us students not to add a super-senior year full of repeating math courses we failed the first time 'round due to horrible teaching and weed-out grading.
Oh shut the fuck up. Back in my day we had to, by hand, code in fully linked hex code by carving letters forming the gematria of the hex for our program into stone tablets, putting them into a huge machine-ark made of cedar and gold and finally hope to G-d that our program would do something more than sit there being heavy!
And this was while wandering in the desert subsisting on tiny bread crumbs that blew in on the wind, mind you. Get off my damned lawn!
Oh, and Linear Algebra. Forgot that one for a moment. Plus statistics if you want to do number-crunching.
Yes, but specifically why do Computer Scientists need Calculus 1-4 and Physics 1-2 when the actual topics with relevance to computing in those respective fields would be {Discrete Math, Symbolic Logic, Set Theory} and some basic electrical engineering material.
Especially when the aforementioned calculus and physics courses are often taught as in-major weeder courses by their respective departments, and the Comp. Sci's therefore get thrown into someone else's weeder courses
We have the proper neural-nets installed, but nobody gives us any input to train the things on! We're just supposed to throw our completely unconfigured AI software into the wild and have it succeed... how?
Hey, where'd that all-caps sentence in the middle of my post come from?
ME, N00BLING!
Except that they then changed him into a closeted homosexual who does nothing but comment on pop culture.
Black-suited Smith? OH FUCK! /me runs for his exit.
Well of course you go for the Agent Smith look, you're Agent fucking Smith!
;-).
But the important question here is: brown suit with earpiece, or black suit without?
I'm a redpill, these things are important to us
So I'm basically going for an "Agent Smith" sort of look?
IAAJ! The Pesach seder (the religious bit) involves a minimum of 4 cups of wine. You may drink more for the meal itself.
Admittedly, kosher wine isn't very strong, but you're going to be frickin wasted.
I acknowledge that the Palestinians don't exactly have well-trained, high-tech military forces in the way of Israel or the USA. I acknowledge that they consider the Occupied Territories (AT MINIMUM) to be their rightful homeland.
But this doesn't mean that firing Qassam rockets (which are technically impossible to aim, and therefore of no legitimate military use) or blowing up nightclubs is moral. Hamas, Fatah, and especially Hizballah have all shown themselves able to conduct strikes specifically on Israeli military targets (witness the instigation of the Second Lebanon War) when they want to. But they don't restrict themselves to such actions. Why?
Because Islamists hold the rest of the world, especially the portion fighting against Islamists, to a higher moral standard than that to which they hold themselves. Which is one of the definitions of "bitchy".
Hey, you don't find me supporting the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. We were supposed to have caught Osama Bin Laden and brought him to trial like the criminal he is YEARS AGO!
And don't even get me started on the sheer boneheadedness and immorality of invading Iraq. And PLEASE DEAR GOD let's not invade Iran next. I know some Persians. They're good people. In (a little-known fact), the Persians are more or less on the side of civilization, on the side of not fucking up other people. They just have a crap government that wants to make itself a regional power by sponsoring bitchy, terrorist Arabs who would normally earn nothing more than a sneer from Iran or Persians (Persians have a long-running ethnic dislike of Arabs that not even Islamism can paper over).
That's just how the mujahideen think. When they play dirty, it's the for the greater glory of Allah. When someone else manages a clean kill on them, it's time for those bullies to start playing fair! Perfect example: Palestine. No, I mean it. Apparently when the Palestinians blow up a nightclub it's "resisting occupation", but when Israelis assassinate a Hamas leader it's time for an investigation into human rights violations.
What total bitches.