Calculus was the easiest of the "maths" I had in college, but that's probably because my teacher was the best maths teacher anyone could ever hope for.
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Calculus was the easiest of the "maths" I had in college, but that's probably because my teacher was the best maths teacher anyone could ever hope for.
Yeah, in my college calculus courses the instructors cared more about the correct answer than if you knew the process for solving the problem. My problem is I typically make small math mistakes that I don't catch and then throw off my answers. I usually follow the process correctly but I may have flipped a sign by accident or I might have screwed up on something else along the way to throw off my answer.
Which is why I really liked how my high school math classes worked. We were allowed to use a calculator on tests, not one that you could program, just one that could do basic math and some trig functions. This made it so you focused less on memorizing arbitrary values and more on how to actually solve the problem. So when I could do it that way I'd usually catch my self making those simple math mistakes when I'd be going through the steps on my calculator. My college classes wanted us to actually have entire sine, cosine and tangent tables memorized, not just common angles, but all of them. Where as in my high school classes my teachers would either allow us to use our calculators to find those kind of values or show us how to go through and figure it out without resorting to memorizing a huge table of values.
Memorizing numbers? HA! I wish. All we got were x's and y's and some a's right next to them ;).
That's really dumb, we couldn't use a calculator but we never had to deal with uncommon angles. If at any point you got a strange value (if it wasn't just a goddamn letter) inside a sin(), you likely did something wrong :p.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
Oh well, I suppose I need to thank my calculus teacher for that. Not only did the man have an amazing passion for maths that literally oozed out of him (he was constantly sweating), but he knew what was important and what wasn't (and memorizing tables of sin and cos is useless for a software engineer), and he also understood there were a lot of people that had Matemática B (essentially simplified math) and needed help understanding stuff like derivations and other more complex mathematical stuff.
The man made me enjoy maths for a year, that's an accomplishment really.
Yeah, I at first thought I did something wrong and asked the teacher if I should have arrived at that value in a sine which was in an in class exercise and he said "Yes, now calculate it out."
In high school we sometimes had those pop up but they were usually at the end of the problem where the teacher would say "Writing just sin(x) is an acceptable answer for this question."
What bugs me about math is all the weird notations. I can never remember what all those funny E's and squiggly lines mean. And that taxicab formula is stupid easy, but wikipedia makes it look complicated. I figured it out in my head, wondered what all the hoopla was about, then looked at wikipedia and went WTF? It was only after checking other sites and having my own idea reexplained to me (albeit: a bit more polished dt = |x2 - x1| + |Y2 - Y1|) that I realized I was right. Anyway, I like bounding boxes. Check for a possible collision on Y first, then check x when you get a hit.
Kamahl, I'd be interested to hear how your teacher managed to make math so enjoyable for you?
In my opinion most kids learn to detest math because the instructor can't be bothered to take the time to explain the intricacies of the equation. Math is a relatively dry subject. As you persue some of the higher maths, the subject can get a little confusing. And sometimes, the student simply needs to be walked through some of the basics which most teachers can't be bothered to do. They expect that the textbook to teach the student once they leave the classroom.
Exactly. Really, I would love to be able to understand math, but I would need someone to sit down and explain it to me in a way I could understand, and then give me many, many examples to practice with. The math teacher I had in both grade 11 and 12 was horrible at teaching math, he would mark down just one equation on the board, and say to me, "Now you know how to do it", but of course, I had no clue, and that teacher spend most of every math class sitting on the edge of his desk, talking to the girls the whole time.Quote:
Originally Posted by SEGA.GENESIS1989
Maybe it's not me at fault, maybe I just had a bunch of shitty teachers. Although, the fact that I didn't care about my education while I was in school, and the fact that I pretty much never paid any attention might also have had something to do with it.
One thing my favorite math teacher I had in high school did was every Monday we'd start the first 15 minutes of class with a problem involving something he did over the weekend. For example one weekend he was helping his neighbor put up a shed and used that as an example to teach trig concepts for getting angles and measurements right for the roof. Things like that make you think of ways to use it outside of class, and then you tend to try and use it more in your daily life making it seem more important and useful.
My math teacher was awesome, knew the stuff and could teach it nicely, but my brain could take that information in at the school pace... when I began understanding the thing we began looking at another, and end result is I know nothing much...
But it has helped me on finding out my own way to the problem, it may not be as pretty but is certainly working and in many cases faster haha
Note that by "enjoy" I mean "not making me want to kill myself".Quote:
Originally Posted by SEGA.GENESIS1989
He had a lot of energy while teaching, so we managed to stay awake. He understood that engineering students are not like math students, so he gave practical examples, and tried his best to contextualize stuff. He also answered questions in a very clear manner, even stuff that I thought "wow, the guy asking wasn't paying any attention". Basically he treated us like we were smart at everything but math XD.
Reiterating the point I was trying to make above, most math concepts are actually pretty simple. They're just so clouded by obfuscation and theorems that it makes them hard to learn.
Whenever I did math, I was fantastic at calculating it. Which constantly had the teachers and parents suggesting I take harder courses, and get disappointed when I don't do as well as they expect.
Calculating math != Being a living math concept storage device.
In fact, my memory as a whole seems to have something against me. Sure, I can pick up concepts easily, and perform them very in the short term. But god forbid I remember them, especially in a school based education environment where they teach you through things in a cycle and expect you to remember it all in 9 months time. :daze:
Screw calculus. All you need to know, when you are new to Assembly programming, is boolean algebra. It's simple. It's just ones and zeros.
You can freshen up on the calculus, when you need it for solving specific problems in your code. Otherwise it's not necessary.
Did you guys really derail this thread to talk about math? MATH?
Goddamn... :p
Hehehe! So Melf what branch of mathematics did you enjoy in school? :p (Sorry, I just had to ask!)