Comments on: Annals of math: how integral calculus did me in

By: Steve D

Steve D — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:30:13 +0000

‘The college I attended had a fairly rigorous set of science requirements for its liberal arts candidates’

Well, good I say. One of the major problems with modern society is the lack of scientific understanding amongst non scientists.

By: GoneWithTheWind

GoneWithTheWind — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 04:08:54 +0000

My first two semesters of calculus was taught by a Chinese graduate student with a strong accent. He would write on the blackboard with his right hand while erasing the previous blackboard panel with his left and talked to us over his right shoulder. Luckily the book was great and I was able to understand it by just reading. The next four semesters was taught by a High School Math teacher (moonlighting) who just might have been the world’s best teacher.

By: armchair pessimist

armchair pessimist — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 21:24:55 +0000

It had always stuck in my craw that I was so utterly stupid when it came to Math, but I went into a field in which spells of unemployment aren’t unusual. During one of my involuntary sabbaticals, I picked up an old calculus book in a 2nd hand book store. The Practical Man’s Course in Calculus, or something like that. I think it was published around the turn of the last century, when the tradition of the self-educated man was still strong. Anyway, wisely I think, it eschewed self-important mathematical proofs and theorems in favor of things like “Given a muzzle velocity of 400 feet-per-second, at what elevation should a soldier point a cannon in order to hit a target 1200 yards away?”
I could get my teeth into that!

No, I did not discover my inner sleeping mathematical genius. It wasn’t home. I think beyond a supple brain able to flip concepts upside down and turn them inside out, you need plain common sense, which I lacked and lack. But with dogged effort you can attain competence, and more importantly, the realization that math and the sciences do not exclusively belong to the immeasurably brilliant.

By: expat

expat — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:44:45 +0000

My stumbling blocks in college were calculus and organic chem. I think the problem was that I never had to study science or math in HS. They just clicked for me, and I never studied for trig, analytic geometry or anything in 2 years of algebra. When I hitcalculus, I didn’t know how to study it, and honestly I don’t think I was motivated when math reached a level beyond game-like problem solving. I felt bad about getting befuddled by organic chem when the benzene ring was introduced, but I now know several 1st-rate scientists who say that that was the hardest science course they ever took. I also know a first-rate biologist who started out as a physics major at MIT and changed to bio when he realized that some in his class understood instantly what it took him a weekend of work to grasp. He said he knew he could never compete with them.

I think to overcome this instant understanding barrier, you have to be highly motivated to working in a field for the rest of your life. I certainly wasn’t.

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:49:09 +0000

Wry Mouth: you just reminded me—I had nightmares about math exams for many many decades afterward.

By: Wry Mouth

Wry Mouth — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:43:31 +0000

I am current calculus & stats teacher, who enjoys your posts on ballet immensely (as that world had been a closed book to me), and composes & plays jazz (woodwinds).

I had a class or two like that as an undergrad at U.C.__.; exams that completely baffled me when I was a young engineering student. I remember the crushing flop-sweat pretty vividly. Also the recurrent nightmares of taking a final but wearing no pants.

All that to say this: you had the wrong teacher, more of a supervisor than a teacher.

Cheers,

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 16:34:58 +0000

I too had this experience, but in grad school. And it was a physics class (Electricity & Magnetism. E&M, otherwise known as Elves and Magicians…) I swear, it was the same guy!

It’s not an accident that so many of us had that experience. THIS WAS NO ACCIDENT!

We all experienced something we used to call “weed-out classes”. The point was precisely to discourage the weaker students to reconsider the path they were on. Sometimes that was their major, and sometimes that was college itself.

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:44:04 +0000

NotSoHeavyD: oh, but I’ve got another story about language requirements. Some day maybe I’ll tell it.

As far as my getting off easy goes on the science/math, let me just say that, at the time I went to school, most colleges required a year of math or science. My school had an unusually rigorous set of requirements in that area: two years instead of one, and the sciences had to be regular one-year sequences of lab science each, rather than a semester here and there of this and that in courses not geared for majors. So when I transferred to a school with only a one-year requirement, I was leaving an unusual situation and going to the standard one.

And by the way, we used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o’clock at night, and lick the road clean with our tongues. Just sayin’.

By: NotSoHeavyD

NotSoHeavyD — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:35:06 +0000

He’d have graduated early but for that requirement. Come to think of it, I don’t that he ever graduated, but I hope that somebody finally had the sense to waive that requirement for him.

Well there’s your problem. “Sense” and “College Administration” are 2 phrases that don’t belong in the same sentence. If his school was anything like mine then there’s basically no way they’d waive a requirement. (Even if they got sued over it which mine did.)

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 11:54:53 +0000

I had thought maybe I’d be able to pass because I had a rudimentary ability to do a few things in integral calculus, but to the best of my recollection the final was all proofs.