Find solution
Math placement and pursuing engineering.

Math courses from the Mathematics Faculty vs. Engineering Faculty, how different are they?

  • I transferred from Chemical Engineering to Math/Computer science and although I received credits for -Math 136 -Math 137 -Math 138 -Math 237 I feel as if I am behind my peers in terms of the math courses. Partly because I didn't bother to completely understand the material due to time constraints (too many labs!) and being lazy. Instead, I simply learned as much as possible right before the exam and forgot everything afterwards. However, now that I am a mathematics student, I think I should have a strong grasp of the basic concepts before pursuing more advanced courses. My question is, should I repeat the courses and take the Math faculty equivalents? Or just try to self-learn the material myself through textbooks? Note: That retaking the courses will most likely set me a year back.

  • Answer:

    From what I understand, engineers go through the math material a lot faster than math majors. I heard that engineers would do multi variate calculus in their 1st year while we're still doing limits and barely getting into derivatives and integrals. If I had to guess why this is, I suspect math in the math department is taught from the ground up with formal proofs for everything whereas in engineering math, this deep level of understanding is not always necessary for practical purposes so they can afford to fly through the material. As Saad suggested, Khan Academy is great for covering basic fundamentals in Math. I always used it to review basic statistics but I'm sure it has good material on calculus and linear algebra. If you go to professor office hours and you visit TA's regularly, there's no reason why you should be falling behind. Having strong basics and fundamentals of whatever math you're studying is really important as you go into more advanced math or else you'll end up with all these frustrating holes in your knowledge. Instead of repeating the courses, maybe you can just sit in one of the classes to get a feel for the material. If you already got credits for those courses, then most of the material will probably seem familiar already so it might be a waste of time. Another suggestion would be to just download math assignments from previous years and see if you can do them.

Jay Kim at Quora Visit the source

Was this solution helpful to you?

Other answers

You don't need to and likely shouldn't retake the math courses. Here's why: The course content is fairly significantly different between engineering and math in terms of focus. Engineering focuses on teaching a lot of content ( formulas and applications ) in a short amount of time whereas math teaches more correctness, proofs, and formally deriving formulae. I took 3rd year pure math courses from an engineering background and during the first course I felt a little behind in terms of proofs (structuring them, and deriving them) but it is not too difficult to pick up. We have learned all of the same knowledge it is just a slightly different way of thinking about the problems and you will likely find it a bit more difficult as engineering is very concrete. Given a problem, choose the formula to apply and apply it correctly. More theoretical math is less concrete as it isn't always intuitive what to use and when, and often there are multiple ways to get to the right answer. The other thing worth mentioning is you will have very little math requirements within CS. I am not sure what upper year math classes (if any) you plan on taking but for all CS courses you don't really require any math that they won't teach you. If you feel you are really at a loss for how to do proofs (as this is the main difference between engineering math classes and math faculty classes) the prof of the course you are in will be willing to help you, and if not simply googling "induction" and understanding that will be sufficient for most of the proofs you would need to do. I came from the engineering department, took a bunch of courses in pure math and 3rd/4th year CS and was just fine without first and second year math classes.

Michael Weingert

I really don't think you need to re-take the courses. Material in first year courses are heavily covered online on Khan Academy - https://www.khanacademy.org/math or http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/. You can self learn this material and anything prerequisite knowledge you need should be reviewed when topics are being taught in upper year courses. Furthermore, don't forget that your instructors and TA' s are resources to use, go to their office hours and they can be very helpful with any prerequisite knowledge you feel you're not solid on.

Saad Zaman

Audit the courses or review previous midterms/finals to determine if you are having difficulties.  Also, go ask one of the math profs and have a good conversation with them.

Nigel Clark

Related Q & A:

Just Added Q & A:

Find solution

For every problem there is a solution! Proved by Solucija.

  • Got an issue and looking for advice?

  • Ask Solucija to search every corner of the Web for help.

  • Get workable solutions and helpful tips in a moment.

Just ask Solucija about an issue you face and immediately get a list of ready solutions, answers and tips from other Internet users. We always provide the most suitable and complete answer to your question at the top, along with a few good alternatives below.