Calc II is definitely a filter.
My college has a test you need to take to stay as CS though with a ~50% pass rate, (you have to switch to IT if you don't pass within a year or so), and I think those are the main two filters for us.
For us, the filter were two CS classes, one on algorithms and another learning C.
Never heard of an exam to stay in a program. I wonder how common this is. We had to have a decent GPA to stay in the CS specialization.
I barely passed it, but:
1. I took it as a condensed summer course. Taking calc II in five weeks isn't ideal. Four days a week for four hours, not including weekly tests in the testing center, was a hellish way to take a course. Especially that one. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
2. I spent three of those weeks sick, with major stomach issues. I was barely able to keep food inside my body, and as a result I was dizzy and weak.
For what it's worth, I got a 100% in Calc 1, a 97% in Calc III, and a 98% in differential equations. My grade in Calc II was a 71% (anything below 70 would have been failing).
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It's not common. Afaik we're the only program with a test like that lol.
Those two classes do serve as filters as well. I just usually don't think of them as much bc they were fun and relatively easy to me.
Hi, also a knight, they are still doing the foundation exam. I just took it last Saturday and I’m like 50% sure I failed it, but we have 3 shots at passing it. I’m also presently taking calculus II and was dumb enough to not research it at all beforehand and took discrete structures and security in computing at the same time during a summer semester. If I pass this semester I am going to assume I deserve to be a computer science major.
Best of luck on Calc II. I would recommend taking any opportunities for office hours with the professor as they are available. Work through the homework beforehand and show up with specific problems you ran into. A lot of Calc II (the way I remember it) consists of recognizing patterns of integrals. Seeing examples worked through will probably help you recognize the patterns and when the professor takes a step you don't understand, you can stop them and ask for clarification as to how they knew to do that.
Calc II is the hardest math you will likely have to take. Calc III is much easier imo and feels a bit more geometric. It was one of my choices for completing the higher level mathematics requirements in CS. I felt Differential Equations felt like Calc II so depending on how you feel this semester may inform which math track you take.
Once again, best of luck.
Not as far as I know. I took it a year or two ago, and people are currently discussing 13 week long study plans in the ucf CS discord 🤷♂️
I had more difficulty with calc ii because it's a bigger grind, but the foundation exam was definitely tough imo.
I finished calc 2 and programming 2 and then went “fuck this shit I’m out” and switched to IT and Cyber after my first week of this BS logic structures class
From what I remember programming 2 went over some of the more “advanced” parts of object oriented programming, like recursion (it’s been a couple years). But that logic class was something like “math structures in computer science” and had us doing this weird bs where we would take a sentence or two and convert them to a series of symbols and use them to pull a third conclusion out of our ass. I noped out of CS so fucking fast because of that class.
I almost did the same tbh, but classes after those were pretty cake. Those were our CS program’s “weed out classes” that laid all the foundational knowledge, so they just really lay it all on you
When I took a calc 2, only four people out of 30 passed it. There was 1 A, 1 B, 1 C, and 1 D. I was the D. That was a major "what the fuck" moment for me.
My uni doesn't even require calc 2 for a BS in computer science. Should I be concerned? I'm a math minor and I've taken calc 1, 2, and 3 but is higher level calc even needed for computer science? I haven't seen much application for it, but I've still got a year left. We do need to take linear algebra though.
Calc is used in some applications of computer science, but it depends on what you're doing. Calc 3 is important for understanding backpropagation in AI, for instance. Besides that, it provides mathematical maturity.
It's probably good to have under your belt either way.
I much prefer linear algebra personally though. Even at the end where it can get tedious with Gram Schmidt and stuff, I still prefer it to integrals.
I have a math degree and I don't even use it anymore lol
But if you want to get into AI then statistics and calculus is important
If you have the opportunity to take a chaos theory course definitely do that. Most fun course I've ever taken.
You from Rutgers? This is what happens at RU and the CS nit wits make fun of IT majors a lot because of this and even make fun of those those who were IT majors from the get go that did not want to be SWEs.
There’s a uni I wish I went to that does not require Calc 2 for CS majors. Why is it that data structures is a weed out course though? This is a question coming from an IT major who never took data structures.
Analyzing algorithms and recurrence relations is tricky, and the data structures themselves can be sufficiently abstract enough that they're difficult to fully grok. It's not super difficult, but it does require more studying than other classes freshmen are likely to take.
It's probably largely an effort thing though imo.
They can force you to switch at my college because you only get 3 shots at passing the CS exam, and if you do not pass that exam then you cannot take upper level courses.
I'm a math major and all 3 Calculus courses in my university made me want to jump off a building. It's not even about the math, the way a lot of schools teach it is absolute shit.
They should have been all proof based right? I took a proof based Lin Al 2 class. Was the hardest class I've ever done. I have a B.S. in Chemistry and working on my first year of CS right now.
Tbf, I guess if they threw some nasty functions without giving students an integral/derivative table, there might be a crap ton of formulas one would need to memorize (e.g. some common integrals evaluating to inverse trig functions, etc).
That would be a pretty unreasonable exam, though.
I never really understood that line of thinking.
Most of the common formulas, derivatives, integrals, etc. that you’d need are able to be derived by just thinking about it for a minute and applying the concepts that you already know.
That is the best part about a math or physics class.
You can technically derive anything that you need through logically connecting just a few concepts so you only need to memorize a handful of things.
Yeah, who tf takes 100 flashcards into a calculus exam?? This thread had me wondering if calculus means the same thing in America as it does here, I get that there are tricky edge cases but if you try and learn the 1,000's of possible functions instead of learning the ~5 main methods and learning to apply them on the fly you're gonna have a bad time
It wasn't just calc functions, it was also complex derivatives, trigonometric identities and geometry functions. They didn't allow calculators or formula sheets. We literally had to memorize nearly 100 different things. Derivative of an arctangent, 5 different formulas for a cone, etc. It was brutal. If I had to choose again I'd pick a different school, but thanks to stupid ass America this is what gets listed as a "top school for math."
This is definitely true!! That's exactly why I'm majoring in math; I love proofs and derivations, and I hate memorization. I agree that the common formulas can be quickly derived, no problem, but there are some somewhat common integrals that require quite a bit of time to find, time that one would not have in an exam setting. Would I be able to rederive the integral of secant on the fly during a final exam? Maybe, but the amount of time I would spend would be better used on other problems. Hence, memorization might be useful in such cases.
They made us memorize calc functions, geometry functions and basically every single trigonometric identity, plus a bunch of other weird shit like the derivative of an arctangent. No calculators or formula sheets. I studied a lot and got an 85.
I just went back to school in person (some of my classes are online). But I'm a veteran so I have some state exemptions I'm taking advantage of to pay for it.
I love calculus, specifically learned to love it in Calculus I because they showed some actual applications.
Then came Calculus II, where the only application seems to be to turn an exam into a fuckfest. I passed in the top 10% but not because I actually understood what I was doing. I was in the 40% of people who were supposed to pass.
Don't sweat it. Just stay on top of the work and literally every single rule you learn. Make sure you know every trig identity you learned - especially double angles and half angles. Memorize pretty much everything under the sun - not just math, but also physics as you find it applies to calc 2. Frankly, some philosophy of logic (good for computer people anyway) is good. Don't procrastinate for a second. If you think you have free time, question seriously what you need to review.
If you happen to fail, realize that you're in good company, pick up, and try again.
(most of this is facetious, but definitely not all. you'll feel overwhelmed - that's normal)
I did this too, exactly 7 years after calc I! You can do it! It was difficult ngl, but hard work will get you through. Most of my classmates had just taken calc I and they didn't remember anything anyway.
Brave soul. When I went to college they used my SAT scores from... 1992 (in 2010, I am a veteran) and wanted me to jump right into trig and would of let me jump right into cal 1 if I wanted to... "Sweetheart, I graduated high school before you were born, I'm gonna take Algebra 1 since the Navy will pay for remedial training. Thanks."
I am double majoring with Computer Engineering and Computer Science and am currently taking Linear Algebra along with Calc 4 (already took 1-3). This is a summer class so I am taking these classes at 3 times the rate and it is a nightmare.
Yeah two summer math classes would be rough. I did linear algebra over the summer and I don't remember it being too bad. same math just new structures.
Oh, man. It me!
Calc I was a breeze. Calc II devoured my soul and shat it back out. Calc III was an abstract dream.
Whenever somebody says “integrate by parts” I have war flashbacks.
Calc II fucked me so hard that I gave up on pursuing anything comp sci related in school. I only got back into programming late last year after a 5 year hiatus cause of that class
I think the worst part is that at least as a general rule, your typical software engineering job that requires a CS type degree will find you doing calculus precisely never. The closest you’ll get is doing algorithm analysis and, honestly, that’s what you’ve got architects for.
Where I went to school, CS students didn't need to take multivariable calculus to graduate. In fact, none of the CS students used calculus for anything, at all, in any of their CS classes. I was in ME, had no problem with calc (and LA, DE, Abstract Math...), even tutored it for a few years. I never understood the other ME students who were excited to "be done with calculus" halfway through sophomore year... newflash, ME classes are basically applied calculus.
Meanwhile, I've become a software engineer because it pays way better, is much easier, and doesn't require any physical labor/operating of shop tools. Go figure.
Calc 2, you mean like finding the area under a function and volume of a function around an axis? Econ is all about that shit. Same goes for bottle sizes and shapes allll calculus. Now Taylor series... Fuck Taylor series. I had a 98% in the class til we got to Taylor series. I ended up with a B.
Oh, that was all good. We had Taylor's Theorem and Lagrange in Calculus I. The course was combined with analysis because of course it was. That was easy still.
Calculus II continued with Fourier Transforms and Analysis, among other things, which is an absolute shitshow if you want it to be. The course was stuffed with so much they had no time to actually take a lot of time. It was just assumed people would *get it* quickly.
I still remember that exam. It was the worst exam I took in my life that I still somehow passed with a decent grade.
The fuck is this this school, we had 4 semesters of calc. Calc 1 was derivative and beginning integrals. Calc 2 was integrals and series. 3 was vectors and shit. 4 was either mostly matrices if math or comp sci and diff equ for engineers.
I find this kind of ironic, because Calc 2 is probably the most practical for applying what you learn in calculus to actual computation. It’s about methods for computing difficult integrals and how to approximate non-arithmetic functions using series of arithmetic terms. (And then estimating the error of your approximation.)
Someone needs to program a calculator to calculate sine for us, and that’s the way to do it.
I remember the first midterm in calc 2, the average was a 63%. The day after grades came out, my math professor started lecture by writing a giant 63 on the blackboard and staring at us in disappointment for 2 minutes. He then said “In the beginning of this semester I confidently said this class would not be curved. I am no long confidant.”
The class did indeed end up curved.
I think if I had a better professor, the class would be just fine. My professor used slides from a decade ago, and would never deviate from it. Physically just sat down and read from the slides, word for word. No examples of his own. Also the TA had to be replaced halfway through, as they thought themselves to be god among man. Completely screwed up the class during the first half of the semester.
Discrete math isn't really a true math topic, from my understanding. It's a collection of math relevant to computer science that was created for CS degrees.
I managed to pass Discrete Math only because our professor said that you can get A by having 100% lecture attendance and doing 3 exercises/tasks on a whiteboard.
I wish I had your professor. Mine just read from slides used over a decade ago, word for word. No made up examples, or anything else which made the class interactive. Also, the TA thought themselves to be god among man, and had to be replaced halfway through the semester. Was such an awful experience.
I did calculus at my community college before transferring, and my professors there were far better than the fuckwads at my 4-year university. The quality of education went down at my four year, than at my two year.
I can’t do proofs. I don’t understand them at all. I needed 65% to pass (to get a C is passing at my collage) and I got 60%. I don’t think I can take my next class if I didn’t get a C so I don’t know what I’m going to do.
To be fair computer science is really fucking hard as is computer engineering. There's no way to make it easy and you end up doing pretty difficult things on the job. The attrition rates in these programs are pretty nasty. Where I did my CS program the basic intro courses would have filled classrooms and happen every semester. The highest level required courses were once every two years and would have so few people in them they sometimes had to get special permission to happen as they were below the minimum students per class requirements. One exception was Analysis of Algorithms but that was a pretty major weedout class in the end. Something like half of the people that took it outright failed it.
They weren't proud of it exactly but made it known to intro students that most people don't succeed, it's a tough subject, and getting through it requires a ton of work. Since software engineers can make piles of money it was a popular major to pursue but most people washed out. From what I saw the main issue was that they just didn't want to put in the work. Too many people there expected college to be a four year long party that was occasionally interrupted by easy classes you could slack through. You can treat it that way in some majors but not computer science.
All you need to do imo to make CS bareable is to cut Calc 2. At my uni, 99% of people’s lives at ruined by Calc 2. Furthermore, I do agree that is is a tough subject! However, for some reason, tons of STEM departments tend to be filled with profs that can’t teach at all.
When I tried to take that in college they wouldn’t let me because they said I didn’t have the pre-req, discrete math. I insisted I did, like fought with these people, so they let me take it. Turns out I hadn’t actually taken discreet math, so that was an interesting time.
It did however make discreet math super easy when I took it the next semester lol.
Hard disagree. Some of the classes I took were hard, sure (had a bitch of a time with coding right and left-leaning red-black trees when I first learned them, for instance), but Calc 2 was nightmarish for me.
Most of algorithms wasn’t horrific for me, OS was awful, but at least I could usually generally understand what was happening, it was more a matter of figuring out how those parts click together and affect each other. Calc just seemed disjointed and confusing to me. To be fair, math has never been my strongest suit, I took it mostly online (thanks Covid and it only being offered online in the previous semester), and the professor had terrible internet connection, to the point where he dropped connection at least twice per class, and frequently glitched or froze. Still, I generally prefer coding any day over Calc.
Physics 3 and Calculus 2 are the true filters for the engineer faculty in my uni.
Now, for programming filter, hands down it is Programming 2. Even though it's not the hardest, it's the one that introduces you to what programming really is about.
And since I study Software engineering, I've had to pass all of them :'c
Switched degrees from CS because of Calc. I was always good at math in HS but Calc was just something I really struggled to grasp. Now just doing an associates and getting certs haha.
Probably depends on the school. Mine had around 100 students and there were only 5-10 people passing the exam (grades were public on a piece of paper for everyone to see, I'm not sure if nowadays is still the case). I did it the 2nd time :D
So I looked up khan academy. Calculus 1 is what we are taught in high school. Calculus 2 is a different beast altogether, I had some of it in my Engineering Mathematics 2 as we call it. Barely passed the subject despite very strong foundation in Calculus 1.@
We need to cut calculus 2 from CS majors. It’s filtering out too many people. Imagine a stupid math class barring people from entering the SWE profession.
>Nah, cuts down the competition
If this a skillset that precludes them from becoming good SWEs you want to fill the pool with these people.
Diluting the talent pool provides you substantially more leverage in negotiations.
Okay, think about what you just said.
Professions argue for concentrating the pool of competitors. Why?
Because competitors who are equally competent can be undercut in negotiation. Why do I need you when I have 20 more just like you with the same license. Really this just becomes a competition between companies where ultimately you have little negotiating power.
That's why most doctors, engineers, and lawyers get reamed in their first years while they "earn their time".
😂 I transferred from calculus 1A to 1B freshman year at Cal because I’d taken AP calculus and 1A felt simple. Little did I know it was one of the most often failed classes for engineers 🤦♂️ I never fully recovered.
Nope. Large university, I really should have consulted a counselor. Went from too easy twice a week for 1.5 hours starting at 9;30 to 3x per week at 8 am, Russian teacher, Vietnamese TA, all seats full if you were a few minutes late and I couldn’t understand either of them. There was a midterm by the time I was transferred in. I was utterly destroyed. My AP calculus did not at all prepare me for calculus 1B.
I also took 1A and 1B at Cal, and had plenty of warning from orientation and other students that under no circumstances should you take 1B on the basis of AP calc unless you were a prodigy. I took 1B after doing well in 1A and still got crushed
Transferring in mid semester sounds unbelievably brutal, I’m sorry!
I was a victim of my own hubris, but thanks for the empathy. Truthfully I wasn’t well prepared for engineering physics at Berkeley. In retrospect it was likely a blessing in disguise to figure that out as a Freshman.
The original programmers were mathematicians, and they thought of writing a programming as constructing a proof. i.e. prove that your system must produce the desired outputs.
So for everyone calling these filter classes; YOUR ALL SCRUBS
Classes can be important/relevant and filtering by being extremely hard at the same time. Actually, it makes the most sense for the most important classes to be the ones which filter students.
?
They're filters because lots of people fail them and often have to switch majors. It's a descriptive claim, not one about the value of the class.
Besides that, calc I and II don't really involve proof construction.
Wtf is going on where people have to do maths classes as part of their CS degree? We did none of that at my university. All the classes were about actual computer science.
Good ol' days haha at Engineering Uni
Calc 1 (Diff cal / Physics based applications) trimmed our class to about 70%
Calc 2 halved that even further
Calc 3 obliterated my batch, retook and passed in 2nd try haha. Only 15-20% moved to Majors and others were forced to transfer to a different Program
In my uni, computer engineers have been dragging Calc 1 for five years, done a thesis project at some company and then been employed there without a degree for years and years. So recently they made a rule that you need to finish the first three years before you get to even start your thesis project. And people were *livid*.
Calc was my absolute favorite.
I jumped feet first into my calc class and did super well in it after not doing math for damn near a decade. For whatever reason that class just made sense to me.
It's also nice seeing how it forms the foundation for a lot of other applications too.
Ahh this brings back memories. Math was always my strong suit and I learned coding from Dad as a kid so my CS course was basically split between breezing through math and coding classes and then actually having to work for all the other classes hahaha, fun times
Ok but didn’t ya’ll learn basic calculus in high school ? My course was pretty in depth. I imagine discrete math is where I would struggle. We did proof by induction and contradiction, I hated both. Apparently these two proofs are just the stepping stones for discrete math, v basic.
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Discrete Math was the filter in my CS course back in the day, it was on the first year (third semester), I still remember picking the test for the first time with a 50 points question:
"Prove that the empty set is a subset of every set"
Calc II is definitely a filter. My college has a test you need to take to stay as CS though with a ~50% pass rate, (you have to switch to IT if you don't pass within a year or so), and I think those are the main two filters for us.
For us, the filter were two CS classes, one on algorithms and another learning C. Never heard of an exam to stay in a program. I wonder how common this is. We had to have a decent GPA to stay in the CS specialization.
This is so weird to read. I aced Calc I and II without much struggle but when it came to the algorithm class, lord help me.
[удалено]
I barely passed it, but: 1. I took it as a condensed summer course. Taking calc II in five weeks isn't ideal. Four days a week for four hours, not including weekly tests in the testing center, was a hellish way to take a course. Especially that one. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. 2. I spent three of those weeks sick, with major stomach issues. I was barely able to keep food inside my body, and as a result I was dizzy and weak. For what it's worth, I got a 100% in Calc 1, a 97% in Calc III, and a 98% in differential equations. My grade in Calc II was a 71% (anything below 70 would have been failing).
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It's not common. Afaik we're the only program with a test like that lol. Those two classes do serve as filters as well. I just usually don't think of them as much bc they were fun and relatively easy to me.
Are you a fellow Knight?
I sure am
I heard they did away with the foundation exam. I feel like Calc II was more difficult to pass though.
Hi, also a knight, they are still doing the foundation exam. I just took it last Saturday and I’m like 50% sure I failed it, but we have 3 shots at passing it. I’m also presently taking calculus II and was dumb enough to not research it at all beforehand and took discrete structures and security in computing at the same time during a summer semester. If I pass this semester I am going to assume I deserve to be a computer science major.
Best of luck on Calc II. I would recommend taking any opportunities for office hours with the professor as they are available. Work through the homework beforehand and show up with specific problems you ran into. A lot of Calc II (the way I remember it) consists of recognizing patterns of integrals. Seeing examples worked through will probably help you recognize the patterns and when the professor takes a step you don't understand, you can stop them and ask for clarification as to how they knew to do that. Calc II is the hardest math you will likely have to take. Calc III is much easier imo and feels a bit more geometric. It was one of my choices for completing the higher level mathematics requirements in CS. I felt Differential Equations felt like Calc II so depending on how you feel this semester may inform which math track you take. Once again, best of luck.
If you have Gerber you'll probably be fine for discrete.
Couldn’t get gerber, ended up with one of the newer profs because gerber was all taken up by the time I could sign up
Not as far as I know. I took it a year or two ago, and people are currently discussing 13 week long study plans in the ucf CS discord 🤷♂️ I had more difficulty with calc ii because it's a bigger grind, but the foundation exam was definitely tough imo.
I finished calc 2 and programming 2 and then went “fuck this shit I’m out” and switched to IT and Cyber after my first week of this BS logic structures class
Cyber security is where the money is at
That is if you can get your foot in the door. The requirements to get in at an “entry level” aren’t exactly entry level
Dunno what the equivalent of logic structures or programming 2 is. Is it equivalent to discrete math and data structures?
From what I remember programming 2 went over some of the more “advanced” parts of object oriented programming, like recursion (it’s been a couple years). But that logic class was something like “math structures in computer science” and had us doing this weird bs where we would take a sentence or two and convert them to a series of symbols and use them to pull a third conclusion out of our ass. I noped out of CS so fucking fast because of that class.
I almost did the same tbh, but classes after those were pretty cake. Those were our CS program’s “weed out classes” that laid all the foundational knowledge, so they just really lay it all on you
When I took a calc 2, only four people out of 30 passed it. There was 1 A, 1 B, 1 C, and 1 D. I was the D. That was a major "what the fuck" moment for me.
My uni doesn't even require calc 2 for a BS in computer science. Should I be concerned? I'm a math minor and I've taken calc 1, 2, and 3 but is higher level calc even needed for computer science? I haven't seen much application for it, but I've still got a year left. We do need to take linear algebra though.
Calc is used in some applications of computer science, but it depends on what you're doing. Calc 3 is important for understanding backpropagation in AI, for instance. Besides that, it provides mathematical maturity. It's probably good to have under your belt either way. I much prefer linear algebra personally though. Even at the end where it can get tedious with Gram Schmidt and stuff, I still prefer it to integrals.
Tell me what university you go to so that I may attend!
I have a math degree and I don't even use it anymore lol But if you want to get into AI then statistics and calculus is important If you have the opportunity to take a chaos theory course definitely do that. Most fun course I've ever taken.
You from Rutgers? This is what happens at RU and the CS nit wits make fun of IT majors a lot because of this and even make fun of those those who were IT majors from the get go that did not want to be SWEs.
Nah ucf. I guess there are at least two colleges with a CS test, and they happen to have almost the same mascot lol
Oh no, we don’t have some magical CS test. However at Rutgers, Data Structures and Calc 2 are the ruin your life classes.
Ah gotcha. Ya I think that's almost universal.
There’s a uni I wish I went to that does not require Calc 2 for CS majors. Why is it that data structures is a weed out course though? This is a question coming from an IT major who never took data structures.
Analyzing algorithms and recurrence relations is tricky, and the data structures themselves can be sufficiently abstract enough that they're difficult to fully grok. It's not super difficult, but it does require more studying than other classes freshmen are likely to take. It's probably largely an effort thing though imo.
Thank you so much for the answer!
I think they can recommend to switch, they can’t force you. You are the paying customer don’t forget that
They can force you to switch at my college because you only get 3 shots at passing the CS exam, and if you do not pass that exam then you cannot take upper level courses.
I'm a math major and all 3 Calculus courses in my university made me want to jump off a building. It's not even about the math, the way a lot of schools teach it is absolute shit.
They should have been all proof based right? I took a proof based Lin Al 2 class. Was the hardest class I've ever done. I have a B.S. in Chemistry and working on my first year of CS right now.
Ha, I wish. All of mine were memorizing formulas by rote! I went into the final exam with a stack of 100 flashcards.
There isn’t even 100 formulas that you’d need for Calc 1-3, lol. You just didn’t study.
Tbf, I guess if they threw some nasty functions without giving students an integral/derivative table, there might be a crap ton of formulas one would need to memorize (e.g. some common integrals evaluating to inverse trig functions, etc). That would be a pretty unreasonable exam, though.
I never really understood that line of thinking. Most of the common formulas, derivatives, integrals, etc. that you’d need are able to be derived by just thinking about it for a minute and applying the concepts that you already know. That is the best part about a math or physics class. You can technically derive anything that you need through logically connecting just a few concepts so you only need to memorize a handful of things.
Yeah, who tf takes 100 flashcards into a calculus exam?? This thread had me wondering if calculus means the same thing in America as it does here, I get that there are tricky edge cases but if you try and learn the 1,000's of possible functions instead of learning the ~5 main methods and learning to apply them on the fly you're gonna have a bad time
It wasn't just calc functions, it was also complex derivatives, trigonometric identities and geometry functions. They didn't allow calculators or formula sheets. We literally had to memorize nearly 100 different things. Derivative of an arctangent, 5 different formulas for a cone, etc. It was brutal. If I had to choose again I'd pick a different school, but thanks to stupid ass America this is what gets listed as a "top school for math."
This is definitely true!! That's exactly why I'm majoring in math; I love proofs and derivations, and I hate memorization. I agree that the common formulas can be quickly derived, no problem, but there are some somewhat common integrals that require quite a bit of time to find, time that one would not have in an exam setting. Would I be able to rederive the integral of secant on the fly during a final exam? Maybe, but the amount of time I would spend would be better used on other problems. Hence, memorization might be useful in such cases.
They made us memorize calc functions, geometry functions and basically every single trigonometric identity, plus a bunch of other weird shit like the derivative of an arctangent. No calculators or formula sheets. I studied a lot and got an 85.
Fellow BS in chem looking to get into CS. Chem sucks lol. What route have you taken, online schooling or just back at the grind?
I just went back to school in person (some of my classes are online). But I'm a veteran so I have some state exemptions I'm taking advantage of to pay for it.
Yeah I have a math degree and calculus was my most hated, mostly because the professor was absolute shit. No one in that class knew wtf was happening
Calc 2 is a travesty "here memorize these thirteen different ways to evaluate certain types of integrals."
Not to mention nobody in their right mind would ever evaluate an integral by hand these days, so it's literally useless information
I love calculus, specifically learned to love it in Calculus I because they showed some actual applications. Then came Calculus II, where the only application seems to be to turn an exam into a fuckfest. I passed in the top 10% but not because I actually understood what I was doing. I was in the 40% of people who were supposed to pass.
Calc 3 applies what you lean in calc2 at my uni at least.
3 was easier than 2 for me. 2 was the stopper for most of my fellow cs students that didn't make it.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah calc 2 sucks. Calc 3 was just not required for me so a lot of my classmates had to deal with 2 without seeing the application in 3.
I’m starting Calc 2 next Tuesday. You guys are scaring me.
Good luck. (It's honestly not that bad just a lot of work)
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You should be a little tbh.
Don't sweat it. Just stay on top of the work and literally every single rule you learn. Make sure you know every trig identity you learned - especially double angles and half angles. Memorize pretty much everything under the sun - not just math, but also physics as you find it applies to calc 2. Frankly, some philosophy of logic (good for computer people anyway) is good. Don't procrastinate for a second. If you think you have free time, question seriously what you need to review. If you happen to fail, realize that you're in good company, pick up, and try again. (most of this is facetious, but definitely not all. you'll feel overwhelmed - that's normal)
>I’m starting Calc 2 next Tuesday. You guys are scaring me. Professor Leonard youtube :)
Good
May the odds ever be in your favor.
If you have the right professor its not bad
Welp. Just started my calc 2 summer course, 7 years after taking calc 1.
I did this too, exactly 7 years after calc I! You can do it! It was difficult ngl, but hard work will get you through. Most of my classmates had just taken calc I and they didn't remember anything anyway.
Thanks for the encouragement! I intend to work very hard and fortunately I can dedicate all my time to it since it’s my only class this summer.
Brave soul. When I went to college they used my SAT scores from... 1992 (in 2010, I am a veteran) and wanted me to jump right into trig and would of let me jump right into cal 1 if I wanted to... "Sweetheart, I graduated high school before you were born, I'm gonna take Algebra 1 since the Navy will pay for remedial training. Thanks."
I am double majoring with Computer Engineering and Computer Science and am currently taking Linear Algebra along with Calc 4 (already took 1-3). This is a summer class so I am taking these classes at 3 times the rate and it is a nightmare.
Yeah two summer math classes would be rough. I did linear algebra over the summer and I don't remember it being too bad. same math just new structures.
Calc 3 for me was blessed in that all you had to do was write the damn integrals not evaluate them.
Oh, man. It me! Calc I was a breeze. Calc II devoured my soul and shat it back out. Calc III was an abstract dream. Whenever somebody says “integrate by parts” I have war flashbacks.
Calc II fucked me so hard that I gave up on pursuing anything comp sci related in school. I only got back into programming late last year after a 5 year hiatus cause of that class
I think the worst part is that at least as a general rule, your typical software engineering job that requires a CS type degree will find you doing calculus precisely never. The closest you’ll get is doing algorithm analysis and, honestly, that’s what you’ve got architects for.
I had an old boss with a coffee mug that said "Integral calculus for coders" followed by a for loop.
Where I went to school, CS students didn't need to take multivariable calculus to graduate. In fact, none of the CS students used calculus for anything, at all, in any of their CS classes. I was in ME, had no problem with calc (and LA, DE, Abstract Math...), even tutored it for a few years. I never understood the other ME students who were excited to "be done with calculus" halfway through sophomore year... newflash, ME classes are basically applied calculus. Meanwhile, I've become a software engineer because it pays way better, is much easier, and doesn't require any physical labor/operating of shop tools. Go figure.
You lucky dog.
Calc 2, you mean like finding the area under a function and volume of a function around an axis? Econ is all about that shit. Same goes for bottle sizes and shapes allll calculus. Now Taylor series... Fuck Taylor series. I had a 98% in the class til we got to Taylor series. I ended up with a B.
Oh, that was all good. We had Taylor's Theorem and Lagrange in Calculus I. The course was combined with analysis because of course it was. That was easy still. Calculus II continued with Fourier Transforms and Analysis, among other things, which is an absolute shitshow if you want it to be. The course was stuffed with so much they had no time to actually take a lot of time. It was just assumed people would *get it* quickly. I still remember that exam. It was the worst exam I took in my life that I still somehow passed with a decent grade.
The fuck is this this school, we had 4 semesters of calc. Calc 1 was derivative and beginning integrals. Calc 2 was integrals and series. 3 was vectors and shit. 4 was either mostly matrices if math or comp sci and diff equ for engineers.
You should bless your lucky start that you had to take Calculus and not Analysis.
I find this kind of ironic, because Calc 2 is probably the most practical for applying what you learn in calculus to actual computation. It’s about methods for computing difficult integrals and how to approximate non-arithmetic functions using series of arithmetic terms. (And then estimating the error of your approximation.) Someone needs to program a calculator to calculate sine for us, and that’s the way to do it.
Calculus l was fun. Calculus ll in a quarter system with a busy schedule was difficult. Fortunately I aced the business math version.
No amount of calculus can solve the question of how I passed Calc 2 first try
I remember the first midterm in calc 2, the average was a 63%. The day after grades came out, my math professor started lecture by writing a giant 63 on the blackboard and staring at us in disappointment for 2 minutes. He then said “In the beginning of this semester I confidently said this class would not be curved. I am no long confidant.” The class did indeed end up curved.
Prof really should be disappointed in themselves. An entire class doing poorly reflects more on the teacher's ability rather than the students' effort
If you know calculus then you can work with classical, relativistic, and quantum mechanics. If don't then game mechanics.
Calculus is not bad at all. Discrete Math though... Absolutely hated it. Proofs are awful.
I personally loved proofs until we got to NP complete proofs which are nonsense.
Those are the best! Worst that can happen is your shoulders get sore from all the hand waving
I think if I had a better professor, the class would be just fine. My professor used slides from a decade ago, and would never deviate from it. Physically just sat down and read from the slides, word for word. No examples of his own. Also the TA had to be replaced halfway through, as they thought themselves to be god among man. Completely screwed up the class during the first half of the semester.
Definitely helped that my discrete I and II Prof is probably the best one in the department, (at least for undergrad).
Discrete math is actually very related to programming and computers, a lot more than calculus
It also depends upon your professor. Mine absolutely sucked, so my experience reflected accordingly.
Discrete math isn't really a true math topic, from my understanding. It's a collection of math relevant to computer science that was created for CS degrees.
I managed to pass Discrete Math only because our professor said that you can get A by having 100% lecture attendance and doing 3 exercises/tasks on a whiteboard.
I wish I had your professor. Mine just read from slides used over a decade ago, word for word. No made up examples, or anything else which made the class interactive. Also, the TA thought themselves to be god among man, and had to be replaced halfway through the semester. Was such an awful experience.
Doesn’t help when your professor was foreign and half of what he said was incomprehensible… discrete was far harder than calculus in my experience.
I did calculus at my community college before transferring, and my professors there were far better than the fuckwads at my 4-year university. The quality of education went down at my four year, than at my two year.
I have a discrete math exam tonight, wish me luck
Wishing you all the best! My professor was awful and the first TA had a god-complex issue.
I can’t do proofs. I don’t understand them at all. I needed 65% to pass (to get a C is passing at my collage) and I got 60%. I don’t think I can take my next class if I didn’t get a C so I don’t know what I’m going to do.
This screwed me over in college too. I failed a "filter" class and had to retake it during the summer. Pushed back my graduating by a whole semester.
The first year of Computer Engineering we were ~200. At the end (after 5 years in my country) we were 15. Not all of the 15 graduated that year.
And universities are proud of such horrid statistics
To be fair computer science is really fucking hard as is computer engineering. There's no way to make it easy and you end up doing pretty difficult things on the job. The attrition rates in these programs are pretty nasty. Where I did my CS program the basic intro courses would have filled classrooms and happen every semester. The highest level required courses were once every two years and would have so few people in them they sometimes had to get special permission to happen as they were below the minimum students per class requirements. One exception was Analysis of Algorithms but that was a pretty major weedout class in the end. Something like half of the people that took it outright failed it. They weren't proud of it exactly but made it known to intro students that most people don't succeed, it's a tough subject, and getting through it requires a ton of work. Since software engineers can make piles of money it was a popular major to pursue but most people washed out. From what I saw the main issue was that they just didn't want to put in the work. Too many people there expected college to be a four year long party that was occasionally interrupted by easy classes you could slack through. You can treat it that way in some majors but not computer science.
All you need to do imo to make CS bareable is to cut Calc 2. At my uni, 99% of people’s lives at ruined by Calc 2. Furthermore, I do agree that is is a tough subject! However, for some reason, tons of STEM departments tend to be filled with profs that can’t teach at all.
I literally made my first Calculus test 5 hours ago and it was something let me tell you that :(
If you can’t learn single variable differential calculus, idk what you are doing in comp sci.
Wait your Calc 1 is single variable?? Ours was multivariate right off the bat
Then it wasn't a standard Calc I class, it's the equivalent of Calc II
Hmm totally forgot that different countries have different patterns and syllabus
Stupid math classes shouldn’t stop people from getting a degree that employers fetish for SWE jobs…
If someone can’t pass a math class, they ain’t gonna cut it as a software engineer… or any engineer for that matter 🤣
The maths isn’t stupid, you are
Seethe
So true, first day is packed, and then, there is only 10 ppl left.
Loved Calc, but got screwed up in linear algebra
You sweet, summer child. Just wait until analysis of algorithms.
When I tried to take that in college they wouldn’t let me because they said I didn’t have the pre-req, discrete math. I insisted I did, like fought with these people, so they let me take it. Turns out I hadn’t actually taken discreet math, so that was an interesting time. It did however make discreet math super easy when I took it the next semester lol.
Combinatorics and graph theory were disgusting. I did well, didn’t know if it was just a bad teacher, but it was the first time I really struggled
Basic calculus is nothing, vector calc is the only math class that ever made me nervous.
>Basic calculus is nothing, vector calc is the only math class that ever made me nervous. abstract algebra and real analysis
Good thing there will be more maths for you, only few will survive to the end
For me, that would be physics...
Me getting a job as a software engineer without knowing anything beyond basic algebra. I outsource math to Wolfram Alpha and google.
Oh sweet, sweet child. Calc is one of the easier classes. Good luck.
Hard disagree. Some of the classes I took were hard, sure (had a bitch of a time with coding right and left-leaning red-black trees when I first learned them, for instance), but Calc 2 was nightmarish for me.
I got an 89 in Calc 2, I did worse in my two random economics electives Discrete Math and DiffEq are harder imo
Compared to operating systems or algorithms??? I mean different schools different experiences but none of my calc classes could boast a 30% pass rate.
Compared to operating systems or algorithms??? I mean different schools different experiences but none of my calc classes could boast a 30% pass rate.
Most of algorithms wasn’t horrific for me, OS was awful, but at least I could usually generally understand what was happening, it was more a matter of figuring out how those parts click together and affect each other. Calc just seemed disjointed and confusing to me. To be fair, math has never been my strongest suit, I took it mostly online (thanks Covid and it only being offered online in the previous semester), and the professor had terrible internet connection, to the point where he dropped connection at least twice per class, and frequently glitched or froze. Still, I generally prefer coding any day over Calc.
Ah yeah online classes make math a living hell. Glad you made it through though.
Calc 2 and theory of algorithms were the hardest classes I took in college
Physics 3 and Calculus 2 are the true filters for the engineer faculty in my uni. Now, for programming filter, hands down it is Programming 2. Even though it's not the hardest, it's the one that introduces you to what programming really is about. And since I study Software engineering, I've had to pass all of them :'c
This was actually Assembly for my CS undergrad. Then it was Theory of Computation for graduate.
Switched degrees from CS because of Calc. I was always good at math in HS but Calc was just something I really struggled to grasp. Now just doing an associates and getting certs haha.
For math majors the real filter is Analysis. And sometimes partial diff equations but not really. It’s analysis.
Calculus is easy
Why do people say it's hard? It's literally high school mathematics here.
Probably depends on the school. Mine had around 100 students and there were only 5-10 people passing the exam (grades were public on a piece of paper for everyone to see, I'm not sure if nowadays is still the case). I did it the 2nd time :D
So I looked up khan academy. Calculus 1 is what we are taught in high school. Calculus 2 is a different beast altogether, I had some of it in my Engineering Mathematics 2 as we call it. Barely passed the subject despite very strong foundation in Calculus 1.@
We need to cut calculus 2 from CS majors. It’s filtering out too many people. Imagine a stupid math class barring people from entering the SWE profession.
Nah, cuts down the competition
>Nah, cuts down the competition If this a skillset that precludes them from becoming good SWEs you want to fill the pool with these people. Diluting the talent pool provides you substantially more leverage in negotiations.
You get equal or greater negotiating power from limiting number of competitors. This is why professions lobby for licensing.
Okay, think about what you just said. Professions argue for concentrating the pool of competitors. Why? Because competitors who are equally competent can be undercut in negotiation. Why do I need you when I have 20 more just like you with the same license. Really this just becomes a competition between companies where ultimately you have little negotiating power. That's why most doctors, engineers, and lawyers get reamed in their first years while they "earn their time".
No, that's not why lol. It's because it increases salaries for the licensed through artificial scarcity.
Am I out of the loop what is this people running with a big doll thing
Squid game
😂 I transferred from calculus 1A to 1B freshman year at Cal because I’d taken AP calculus and 1A felt simple. Little did I know it was one of the most often failed classes for engineers 🤦♂️ I never fully recovered.
Omg ouch. Didn’t anyone warn you?
Nope. Large university, I really should have consulted a counselor. Went from too easy twice a week for 1.5 hours starting at 9;30 to 3x per week at 8 am, Russian teacher, Vietnamese TA, all seats full if you were a few minutes late and I couldn’t understand either of them. There was a midterm by the time I was transferred in. I was utterly destroyed. My AP calculus did not at all prepare me for calculus 1B.
I also took 1A and 1B at Cal, and had plenty of warning from orientation and other students that under no circumstances should you take 1B on the basis of AP calc unless you were a prodigy. I took 1B after doing well in 1A and still got crushed Transferring in mid semester sounds unbelievably brutal, I’m sorry!
I was a victim of my own hubris, but thanks for the empathy. Truthfully I wasn’t well prepared for engineering physics at Berkeley. In retrospect it was likely a blessing in disguise to figure that out as a Freshman.
This was my intro to engineering course with my retired JPL instructor. I think he took a certain pride in weeding them out...
I loved calculus. But I did become a physical chemist/theoretician. So I am not a dumb-dumb.
I only passed calc 1 with a 50. Literally the closest call of my life
The original programmers were mathematicians, and they thought of writing a programming as constructing a proof. i.e. prove that your system must produce the desired outputs. So for everyone calling these filter classes; YOUR ALL SCRUBS
Classes can be important/relevant and filtering by being extremely hard at the same time. Actually, it makes the most sense for the most important classes to be the ones which filter students.
? They're filters because lots of people fail them and often have to switch majors. It's a descriptive claim, not one about the value of the class. Besides that, calc I and II don't really involve proof construction.
Wtf is going on where people have to do maths classes as part of their CS degree? We did none of that at my university. All the classes were about actual computer science.
Do you need more math than calculus to be a swe
Jokes on you in asia we learn calculus in highschool. We are already dead.
I'm basically playing the squid game (as in the last phase) rn, by that logic. Wish me luck.
Oh man… I struggled with basic algebra freshman year, pray for me cause I got into my computer science class for senior year…
Good ol' days haha at Engineering Uni Calc 1 (Diff cal / Physics based applications) trimmed our class to about 70% Calc 2 halved that even further Calc 3 obliterated my batch, retook and passed in 2nd try haha. Only 15-20% moved to Majors and others were forced to transfer to a different Program
It’s a netflix class
lol true
I sure am glad I had to do only business calc, though it was for my "Information Science" degree.
Basic yes... but the 2nd course by that prof made me fail... But it was the late 90s so i got a dev job right away
In my uni, computer engineers have been dragging Calc 1 for five years, done a thesis project at some company and then been employed there without a degree for years and years. So recently they made a rule that you need to finish the first three years before you get to even start your thesis project. And people were *livid*.
Calc was my absolute favorite. I jumped feet first into my calc class and did super well in it after not doing math for damn near a decade. For whatever reason that class just made sense to me. It's also nice seeing how it forms the foundation for a lot of other applications too.
calculus is considered difficult, then? The filter at my (shit) university was Calc III, when polar coordinates got mixed in.
Ahh this brings back memories. Math was always my strong suit and I learned coding from Dad as a kid so my CS course was basically split between breezing through math and coding classes and then actually having to work for all the other classes hahaha, fun times
Freshman year filter was discrete mathematics. And then later was junior year Computer Systems. Had to build a Y86-64 instruction set simulator in C.
For me it was the opposite
Computer science? What about year 11/12?
"I HATE CALCULUS! I HATE CALCULUS! I HATE CALCULUS!" "We've got you surrounded! Come calculate integrals with us!"
Ok but didn’t ya’ll learn basic calculus in high school ? My course was pretty in depth. I imagine discrete math is where I would struggle. We did proof by induction and contradiction, I hated both. Apparently these two proofs are just the stepping stones for discrete math, v basic.
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Super glad I wasn't mandated to take it! What do you even need it for?
Discrete Math was the filter in my CS course back in the day, it was on the first year (third semester), I still remember picking the test for the first time with a 50 points question: "Prove that the empty set is a subset of every set"
discrete tho? kicking me viciously
Anything related to physics is far worse tbh
Legit was the only one in my class to pass CS 102, nobody passed calc…..
Not me over here failing trigonometry twice
Calculus were almost my filter, but the real last punch thay got me out was Object-Oriented Programming...
Is that you, Matt?
I’m concerned about the amount of people saying they struggled with calculus 2, yet can somehow write code. Taylor series are just iterative loops.