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  1. 1. Which topics are interesting?

    • Algebra
      28
    • Geometry
      18
    • Trigonometry
      18
    • Calculus
      23
    • Combinatorics/Set Theory
      13
    • Probability/Statistics
      25
    • Algorithms
      14
    • Other
      9
    • All math is horrible
      12


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The first four were fun. Dunno about the others.

I love it. Math is easily my best subject. 8D

[/stereotypical Asian kid]

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All the math I've learned so far has been lame and boring. I've heard that calculus is fun and hard though...which means I'm not looking forward to it. Well, the hard part anyway, since I'm bad at math.

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Calculus actually made a lot more sense to me when I first learned it than other branches did. When I first was learning algebra and geometry, it was like hitting my head repeatedly against a wall; it was frustrating and painful, but after a while there was a breakthrough and things made sense. With calculus, it made sense right from the beginning. I think part of it was the teachers, really; my high school calculus teachers were absolutely excellent, while my algebra teachers were kind of terrible (the geometry teacher was pretty awesome, but then it was geometry, which nobody likes anyway.) Good teachers can make math interesting as well as making sense, I think; bad teachers make it boring even if they make sense of it. (Then there was my Calc BC teacher, who was this awesome old lady who somehow tricked year after year of students into thinking that BC was a hilarious goof-off class while still installing enough knowledge into their heads to produce hundreds of 5s on the AP exam per year...)

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I've always been good at math. Despite almost never paying attention, I easily am the best in my Calc BC class. I have plenty of time to do other homework or just mess with the wonder known as the TI-89. Although my lack of English skills makes up for any ease I have in math.

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I'm a freshman, so I've only had algebra out of all the poll choices. it's easily my favorite class this year and I've been doing well in it.

Well, kids I knew that had a field day with Algebra usually were slightly worse in geometry.

I'm your age, and yet I found myself acing Algebra I in 7th grade, but I had a B in Geometry in 8th grade. :C

So good luck in advance~

:P

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I've always been good at math. Despite almost never paying attention, I easily am the best in my Calc BC class. I have plenty of time to do other homework or just mess with the wonder known as the TI-89. Although my lack of English skills makes up for any ease I have in math.

I remember AP calculus. Due to certain issues, I actually taught most of the BC part of the course to myself, seeing as though I was bored out of my mind in a full-year calc AB course (they didn't change it until a couple of years after I went through calculus.) Oh well, I didn't find it particularly painful, so I'm fine with the result.

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I remember AP calculus. Due to certain issues, I actually taught most of the BC part of the course to myself, seeing as though I was bored out of my mind in a full-year calc AB course (they didn't change it until a couple of years after I went through calculus.) Oh well, I didn't find it particularly painful, so I'm fine with the result.

I'm just bored out of my mind in every class, except for maybe my electronics class. But I'll be out of my dumb little school that doesn't even have a football team in a couple months, so I just have to do enough to get by. Which means I don't pay attention, do maybe half of my homework, and annihilate the tests as a grade booster.

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1. I'm real real good at math.

2. I need math in the career I want the most... really need it.

3. ........................................................... I hate math.

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1. I'm real real good at math.

2. I need math in the career I want the most... really need it.

3. ........................................................... I hate math.

What major/career, may I ask?

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I think I'm pretty good at math, but I'm only in Precalculus B right now, so I'm not sure if my judgment is accurate. I've just learned about sec, csc, and cot, and I can safely say that I like algebra much more than trig. I should be in AP Calculus BC right now, but I didn't have math the first trimester of my freshman year, so I couldn't fit in Precalculus B last year. Sucks...

Anyway, my current teacher is soooo insane. He threw a desk at a kid last year (though he claims that he didn't throw it at him), and when a really annoying kid in our class this year wouldn't shut up, he threatened to rip off the kid's arm, shove it down his throat, and then reattach it and watch him die of some infection caused by the bacteria in his throat. He also makes suggestive comments about just about every mathematical operation. Like how to shove a negative through (aka distributing). He told us a story about how, if a man in some country in Africa thinks that his wife is cheating on him, he can just shout "Call name!" and beat her until she says a name. So now, whenever he wants to know what a side is called in relation to an angle (like opposite or adjacent) he yells "CALL NAME!" and smacks the white board. Totally nuts...

Edited by Ragnell
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However, if you should take a class in linear algebra or matrix algebra, be prepared, for that class will kick your sorry behind.

Crazy talk. Linear algebra is le awesome. Why? Because linear algebra + calculus = differential geometry, and differential geometry is the form of mathematics that most elegantly handles basically all of classical physics (i.e. not quantum physics).

Hell yeah! Taking a course on advanced classical dynamics will get you introduced to tangent bundles and one forms and Lie algebra, and while slightly mind boggling it was very slick and elegant, and definitely worth appreciating. And of course, I have an undying love for Noether's theorem, but I think that's almost a prerequisite for physicists.
Now actual abstract algebra? I.e. ring theory/field theory/galois theory. That stuff is horrible. I really don't like how it takes about 200-300 pages of prerequisite material to prove that there is no general formula for the solving polynomials of order 5 and higher.

Oh Newton, yes. Ring/field/galois theory gave me nothing but headaches, and I barely scraped out a passing grade in my graduate level algebra course. No thank you, please.

Also, my first thoughts on reading this post was "Who is this awesome person thinking so similar to me?" Then I saw it was quanta, and all was made clear. :lol:

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I think all math is interesting, but I immensely dislike practicing it. I am not a math person; finishing my requirements for Calculus has made me very happy. That being said, statistics and Biology are intertwined, so I suppose that is my favorite from the smörgåsbord of mathematics.

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1. I'm real real good at math.

2. I need math in the career I want the most... really need it.

3. ........................................................... I hate math.

What major/career, may I ask?

Well the career I want the most is to be an astronomer.

If not that then a landscaper....... see the problem? =D

Well it's kinda a problem. I do fine at math. That makes things not as bad. I just find it so boring XD

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1. I'm real real good at math.

2. I need math in the career I want the most... really need it.

3. ........................................................... I hate math.

What major/career, may I ask?

Well the career I want the most is to be an astronomer.

If not that then a landscaper....... see the problem? =D

Well it's kinda a problem. I do fine at math. That makes things not as bad. I just find it so boring XD

Well, I'm an economics major, which is little more than applied mathematics. And I don't know how far you've gone in math, but the real fun starts when you get to calculus 1. At least I think so. Hold in there miss Freohr, you'll find some math you like sooner or later.

P.S. what does the XD emoticon mean? I honestly don't know... :(

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However, if you should take a class in linear algebra or matrix algebra, be prepared, for that class will kick your sorry behind.

Crazy talk. Linear algebra is le awesome. Why? Because linear algebra + calculus = differential geometry, and differential geometry is the form of mathematics that most elegantly handles basically all of classical physics (i.e. not quantum physics).

Hell yeah! Taking a course on advanced classical dynamics will get you introduced to tangent bundles and one forms and Lie algebra, and while slightly mind boggling it was very slick and elegant, and definitely worth appreciating. And of course, I have an undying love for Noether's theorem, but I think that's almost a prerequisite for physicists.
Now actual abstract algebra? I.e. ring theory/field theory/galois theory. That stuff is horrible. I really don't like how it takes about 200-300 pages of prerequisite material to prove that there is no general formula for the solving polynomials of order 5 and higher.

Oh Newton, yes. Ring/field/galois theory gave me nothing but headaches, and I barely scraped out a passing grade in my graduate level algebra course. No thank you, please.

Also, my first thoughts on reading this post was "Who is this awesome person thinking so similar to me?" Then I saw it was quanta, and all was made clear. :lol:

Yeah, so far I've only seen things from the General Relativity and Differential Geometry perspective (I just started the graduate courses in those this year). The theory of differential geometry is great (It just makes some things so clear), and it's astonishing what you can compute, but the huge variation in notations and conventions drives me batty. It makes it much harder to learn anything. I don't think I can even type the damn notation properly without LaTeX or Word.

I don't think I've seen any two differential geometry books with a shared notation, and similarly for books on General Relativity (although not as bad). If only everyone could agree on some sort of more standard notation like for ordinary calculus and differential equations...

I'm hoping to avoid graduate algebra, but it looks kind of necessary if I ever want to take a course in Algebraic Topology or Algebraic Geometry.

Well the career I want the most is to be an astronomer.

If not that then a landscaper....... see the problem? =D

Well it's kinda a problem. I do fine at math. That makes things not as bad. I just find it so boring

Higher level math is pretty different from what you'll do in high school. For astronomy/astrophysics a lot of calculus would still be used, but there's more focus on ideas in higher level math and a little less focus on repeatedly drilling computations.

Edited by quanta
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