What groups are Lie groups?

What is it like to take Math 261 (Lie Groups) at Berkeley?

• Answer:

  I can only tell you my experience, and you will probably have a different one depending on your mathematical background and what else you're doing that semester. Lie Groups was the toughest class I took at Berkeley. Though it's also the last math class I took (Fall 2010) as an undergrad, so I can't testify how it compares to Lie Algebras or other sufficiently advanced classes. And it wasn't exactly the best semester of my life and I wasn't focusing on school that much. I had a friend who was in my class and had a pretty strong algebra background (but he neglected to take the graduate analysis series) while I had a pretty strong analysis (but I neglected to take the graduate algebra series) . We had the following exchange: Me: I don't understand anything, it's all algebra and no analysis Him: Well I don't understand anything, it's all analysis and no algebra So I hope you feel comfortable with the prerequisite material. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been if I hadn't taken Differential Manifolds concurrently. The class itself was nicely structured. It was 100% based on homework. I asked the professor when the homework was due, and he told me that he had to turn in grades for the semester at some point, so before that. If you turned in a quarter of the work then you got an A. But I was sweating those last few weeks trying to finish that 25%. I would have dropped the class asides from two things: the subject matter is beautiful, and I had a pool of friends with whom to work. I don't believe the course material would have clicked with me if I wasn't working with a group of people (and I don't think it would have clicked for some of them either). And when it did click it was great. You spend a long time building these disparate tools in analysis and algebra when you study math. They do feel like two disjoint meta-topics and you do one or the other. In Lie Groups they come together in clever and aesthetically pleasing ways. It was the first time in my life that I felt math anxiety, but once I overcame that it was a rewarding class. See how it goes. You can always drop or audit. It's very low risk to test the class out.