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I blame them... it's easier... because their policies (at my school) are really screwed up. Grading is one thing (you'd think with a *math* department it would be fair), but this... arrrrggghh...

I took math 223 my freshman year (two years ago). I kept the textbook because I figured I'd need it for math 224. I even checked and they have the same textbook - TAN Applied Calculus for the managerial, life, and social sciences. I thought I'd be ok. Then I went to the class yesterday and found out that I need the sixth edition and I had the fifth edition ]:| . The questions aren't the same, so unless I want to get 0 points for all my homeworks, I have to get the sixth edition. Of course, now it's too late to do anything but go to the bookstore, where they only have new books. I can't even sell my old book! So I went to the store, and now about $150 later I have the right book. That used up the money I'm getting for working really hard last week (over 40 hours)... And do you think MATH has CHANGED in the past year? No, I think somebody just really wants my money...

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Super that is dodgy. I have Statistics issues...it is NOT my forte. My gripe is that their system for grading the ongoing assignments has inconsistent rounding. Sometimes their answer is based on a a rounded figure and other times the whole -4.545451154535 mess. So there is no leeway or consistency...means you get crap results when your working out is RIGHT. Driving me nuts!

&lt;gripe over&gt;

There is a poster in our Numeracy Centre with a pic of Einstein and a quote "Whatever your problems with Mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater" ........... it is no comfort. well maybe some




GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR STUDIES.

Last edited by wish-ga at 23-Aug-2005 22:53

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~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

Thanks. I had forgotten how much more work there is for this than it looks like (each problem is really more like 6 problems in the book), but I started on the homework tonight. So far, so good. Hopefully I will do better in this multiple variable stuff than the single variable calculus that has had a chance to sink in.

I think the way they grade stuff has changed yet again since I took 223. They take your exam score and apply it to the person whose total rank before the exam is the same as the rank of the exam... course-wide. I think they just came up with the least fair system they could so the professors could justify handing out whatever grades they wanted to the students. It's so convoluted nobody would ever know...

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it's not the departments fault (not entirely anyway). the book makers are constantly "updating" their books to force you to buy new ones every couple years. that way the book distributors make lots of money and the students end up even poorer than before.

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"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

Either way..

did the math department have to switch to the new edition?

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As a former mathematics student at university, I find this a tad suspicious.

When I took courses, the set books were posted a year in advance. So if there were any changes being maed ot a course, they didn't affect the current students. But then my course consisted principally of pure and applied mathematics with an emphasis upon the hard sciences (physics, chemistry etc).

Part of the problem here is that you're buying textbooks for statistics as applied to the social sciences. Which is something of a bane of contention among dedicated mathematics students (or at least, was when I was at university - we used to call ourselves 'real mathematicians', as in 'real mathematicians prove it' ). The problem here is that the social sciences have been notorious in the past for changing methodologies according to the latest fad, regardless of whether that change is rigorous or not. Statistical inference is a very murky intellectual pond to step into unless you know exactly what you are doing, and sadly, all too many social scientists in the past have resorted to less than rigorous methodologies to support conclusions that were driven more by ideological than scientific motives. But then the 1980s was a particularly bad decade for this.

As for new editions of the relevant textbook, I see no reason why a properly constituted course should not be constructed in such a manner as to phase in such changes in the manner I have described above. But then one has to ask, are the teachers of this course dedicated mathematicians or are they social scientists?

As for the marking system you have described, that would have been barfed out with its pants on fire at my university. At least it would have been in the mathematics department.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Nope, it's the math department (and calculus, not statistics... which I still don't really know why multiple variable calculus is required for my major in wildlife...), not statistics, social sciences, sciences, or otherwise. The *entire* math department uses the same wacky grading scheme too, which makes me feel particularly sorry for the engineers who have to take lots of math. (my school is known for engineering)

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cali, you should know that it's the physicists who do the "real math"

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"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

I met a math major this summer who called physicists "dirty mathematicians". She was convinced that only real math purists were mathematicians... nothing applied whatsoever. :%)

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I met a math major this summer who called physicists "dirty mathematicians". She was convinced that only real math purists were mathematicians... nothing applied whatsoever

Good grief... it is good to be passionate about what you are doing but is it necessary to denigrate others with an elitist attitude. Pure mathematics great, but people who apply things are creating the things we use in life like, um computers.

Send the pure math major out into the workforce... she will be eaten alive if she tried to get ahead by treading on others.

---&gt; This is wish-ga's cranky mummy face;

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~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

Moondog, if it wasn't for the likes of us, the physicists wouldn't be able to do the "real math" ...

Oh, and as for why calculus is needed in a wildlife course? Wait till you start running population simulations. And have to get to grips with differential equations to do the sims. Then you'll be glad you took calculus.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002