I don't feel confident of scoring A anymore. Erm, it's not one thing, so far I have fundamental theorem of calculus, limits, L' Hopital's rule, Fourier series, Taylor's series
I couldn't do the practice test paper to a standard that I'm satisfied with.
Meanwhile, instead of revising my math topics I'm trying to figure out the meaning and usage of いいか, いい加減 and いい加減にしろ
I'm now even more confused after finding いいかげんにしたら駄目よ
@Flaw: Fundamentally, the other problem is that calc is a new layer of mathematics. Arithmetic is calculation/manipulation of known quantities. In Algebra, you start to manipulate unknown quantities. In Calc, you start to manipulate equations at once... that's actually quite strange until you get used to it.
I don't know what high school is like over there but I think here at least the idea is that students should know algebra before entering uni.. (though most people completely miss the point and rather see it all as magic instead)
@gibbon Kinda depends on your major. Technically-minded students are expected to do Calc 1 at university, first semester of the first year. (Although if you go to a good high school, you might have done that in high school already)
If someone is going into a non-engineering/science major (like Japanese!), then they'll probably take "College Algebra" sometime in the sophomore-junior years
Sure, I just think that "something" shouldn't be a bunch of stuff unrelated to your major. I too was forced to take at least one such class and it just felt pointless.
You can see this clearly when you compare it to the advanced degrees, where the university is certifying that you not only have studied physics (for example), but are an 'expert' at some particular area for the Master's degree. Different purpose, so it doesn't require the same "broadening" courses.
"Sustainable development" or something.. A bunch of hippie stuff about how we are affecting the environment etc.. Apparently important because I went to an engineering uni and engineers should know that stuff.
And I suspect it would make the technical subjects MUCH stronger if they focused more on the "who" of their fields... shared a bit more of how some of the decisions and experiments were made.
I say this all with the caveat that your odds of avoiding a worthless classical liberal arts department are not very good.
I bet.. I'd never try such a thing. :P Actually we don't even have it at the uni I went to.
..though of course we could take classes from the other big uni in this city which is a bit more humanities-oriented. And sometimes have the credits counted towards our degrees. But philosophy? I don't think so.. don't know.
I've often felt that students build up this wall between "college work" and "real work" that really doesn't need to exist. Technical students, in particular, overstate the similarity between what they're doing in school and what they'll do in the 'real world'.
It sounds a bit like I'm contradicting myself... so I should probably clarify. The point of the school work is NOT to teach you how to calculate boundary conditions for electron probability densities in highly artificial scenarios. (which... technically... is the only thing they teach) The point is to teach you how to think about the problem.
Students overconcentrate on the "You solve this problem by doing things that make math majors cry ('dx is a variable'!!!)", rather than on setting up the right framework and vocabulary. A little more focus on people who are trying to solve these problems for real (or who originally solved the problem) might help to make it more obvious.