Wednesday, May 09, 2007

The Academic Portion of Spring '07

Think I will start things off by just listing my grades before giving my opinions on each of the classes.

Numbers and Polynomials -A
Elementary Differential Equations -A
History of Jazz -A
Man's Food -A
Introduction to Financial Accounting -B

Now that I have gotten that out of the way I would like to make it very clear that I am somewhat disappointed with my grades, more precisely the B in accounting. I know that I could have gotten an A but there is no point in dwelling on it, I just have to accept that it was my fault I received a B and move on.

Numbers and Polynomials: Interesting class. The purpose of the class was to help math students transition to proof based mathematics. Personally I found this class very easy and somewhat unnecessary since I had been writing proofs since the end of my junior year in high school. Regardless, the class was pretty cool. The first few weeks were a pain since was had to prove what many would consider trivial statements; such as "Prove that for any real number v that v*0=0." I know stupid right, but since the class was here to help us build rigours proofs we had to provide a proof, which for this problem was not all that obvious.

Elementary Differential Equations: First let me say that this class was geared more towards engineers than to those of us who crave rigours math classes. Now you can imagine that I was bored out of my mind. I spent most of my time in this class bored out of my mine. Occasionally, he would provide an interesting proof but I think this only happened twice. The one that I remember the most was when he proved the formulas for the Laplace transforms for the sine and cosine functions. Instead of the usual process of integration by parts he used Euler's formula (e^ix=cos(x)+isin(x)) and worked with a simple complex integral. I know that he did not explain why the usual rules for integration over the real numbers also applied to integration over the complex numbers but I guess that will be left to another class. However, this class did somehow manage to make me want to take more differential equations classes...hopefully ones that are for math students.

Man's Food: Class is online and boring as hell. All he does is read off of a PowerPoint presentation. You really don't need to buy any of the books or do any of the reading. All you need is the CD which enables you to complete the first assignment. If you are willing to spend $45 to buy notes then you can easily make an A. I only spent $30 because I chose to actually study on my own for the first exam but then realized that there were more important things in life. If you are looking for an easy biological general education credit then I would suggest this class.

History of Jazz: Thank you Bethany and Wanda for suggesting that I take this class. I do have to admit that the class was very easy but unlike most easy classes it is actually interesting. Sadly this was the professors last semester at UF. This was probably my second favorite class, after Numbers and Polynomials. Reading the book was not the most enjoyable thing but it was better than reading for other classes.

Introduction to Financial Accounting: The information was interesting. The reason for the B was that I did not study as much as I should have for the first test. However, I managed to get A's on the second exam and the final. I am sure that the professor actually new more information but was not able to openly show it because of the way the class was set up. He would basically just review some PowerPoint slides, which all contained information that could be easily found in the textbook.

Overall the semester was one step short of a success. Now I am looking forward to linear algebra, actuary exams, working with Buchholz, and trying to still have a social life; let's see how things go.

2 comments:

Ann said...

well, i don't know how often i'll be free, but i'll let you know when i am.
and the whole "start over" thing. i don't mean completely start over, just go somewhere new and have a fresh start there for the 7 weeks..
basically, its good not knowing people.

Laura said...

I was looking at your links--Are you serious about becoming an actuary? That's a pretty awesome gig if you obtain the title. There's such a nice little history behind the job.