Anybody like maths?

BigBadMick

I signed up for an a-level maths night class at the start of September. Gonna havemy a-level maths finished by summer 2008.

I've started reading some maths books lately too. Ordered this book from amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Journey-Through-Genius-Theorems-Mathematics/dp/014014739X/ref=sr_1_1/026-4276967-5372413?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192043463&sr=8-1

Think I'd like to do a maths degree once I finish the a-level and get the rest of my accountancy exams out of the way...

Anybody else like maths?

beanz

Not personally but I have a friend back in England who is obsessed with Calculus
and spends every free waking moment studying/do/solving it. He is probably one of the top Calculus guys in the country but no one knows because he has 'issues' and rarely goes out the house never mind actually talk to people.

Strange how those types always seem drawn to math...I guess he has some form of autism or something.

Laser

I've done A-level maths and an engineering degree which, we were told, has similar maths content to the first year or so of a pure maths degree.

The A-level should have been fairly straightforward except the teacher we had basically liked to say "read chapter 6 of the book and get on with it". It was only another teacher agreeing to tutor a few of us in the lunch hour that scraped me a pass. (Yet I walked GCSE maths. 90%+ in mocks.)

The maths in the degree got very heavy, near philosophical in some respects. There is no way I'd ever pass a pure maths degree! If you find maths interesting as a theoretical subject in itself I expect you'll find the degree level stuff much more up your street than the A-level, which is a little too much rote-learning to be interesting.

Just make sure you get a very good understanding of the basics of calculus early in your A-level, and scream at the teacher until it is properly explained to you, 'cos without that foundation the rest will not be at all easy.

murtceps

We were the first year not to do calculus at 'O' Level. Unfortuntley when we started 'A' Level I don't think anyone had told the teacher, we hadn't done Calculus. I got an easy A in 'O' Level, but remember leaving the first 'A' Level lesson on calculus thinking what was that all about. I then spent the next two years hating maths, and lessons felt as if I being hit with a baseball bat.. I ended up with a D.

Went on to do an Engineering degree, maths was even harder than A Level, Laplace Transforms - Whats that all about.

mel the bell

i fuckin hate maths / numbers
think im number dyslexic tbh, my mind goes blank when confronted with em, and my works ALL numbers so amazing how ive made trainee number 2 tbh :

prolly why i never got into programming on the computers too, i only just passed my pc essentials 1 course due to the more practical stuff rather than the number conversions , i/o, irq settings etc

Winston

I like the sort of maths that you mostly do with computers. Set theory, mathematical modelling, algorithms etc.

Calculus makes my head hurt really quite badly. Unfortunately, most of the maths in analogue electronics is in the brainfuck category, and I really want to learn analogue electronics. Fortunately, these days you type in $FOO calculator into Google (where $FOO can be whatever term you're after, impedance, low pass filter dimensioning, whatever) and someone's made an online calculator so the gory details go away and you can conentrate on letting the magic smoke out of yet another power transistor.

Alcoholics Anonymous

Gotta say I love math. But I am definitely not a pure math person. I need to have some kind of application to truly understand something so I get on well with any kind of applied math.

Pure math is a completely different kind of animal. I've had to dip into it on occasion and although I can muddle through it I never feel like I have a complete grasp as I do with anything with applications. I also find the texts much more difficult to read. It all starts out well because the subject matter is usually very simple and then the theorems pile on, some of which seem to be for very trivial things. And then you reach chapter 4 and suddenly the ideas are no longer obvious and their proofs usually consist of magical steps apparently condensing three or four theorems from earlier chapters which I guess you are supposed to notice and figure out on your own. You need to understand the proof to understand what the consequences of the theorem are. Which means each theorem takes a long time to grasp and reading becomes very very slow. I usually get tired and abandon the book. I find all pure math texts share these characteristics; if this is what pure math students find is acceptable then I am definitely not a pure math guy.

guesser

aowen wrote: »

I once interviewed Tom Lehrer.

Really?!? that's very cool Mr Owen

Arjun

I'm no math expert by a long way but I actually enjoyed differential calculus in my Class XI/XII (what you may call 'A' levels?) but not so much integral calculus.

Curiously I also enjoyed Physics problems that involved differential calculus but was poor at other sorts of Physics problems that others would perhaps find relatively simple (the latter mostly being simple substitutions in a known equation - my problem being I often didn't remember the equation!).

It's curious that I find certain fields in maths/physics to be of interest and am actually good at but am poor at certain other things in maths/physics. I guess that's why I'm pretty average at both!

psj3809

I presume there are plenty of people who dont like maths ? Cant believe anyone would like it ! How come everyone calls it math now ? Just sounds like i have a lisp when i say that. Thought it was mathematics or maths for short, everyone calls is 'Math' now. I sound like Jamie Oliver saying that

mile

maths is shite, invented by some ponce who had no bird, so decided to start counting his spots, then some wanker said a triangle was a great thing and his mum agreed, then some clever cunt thought it would be good idea to start counting in letters to try and impress an underage girl he knew, he was arrested and hung himself in the nonce wing of the local gaol.


so no i don't like maths. its never helped, ive never ever counted anything. not ever ever in a million billion years!!