Just how much math have you learned?

[aerius]

Essentially a computer engineer, then? That makes me wonder what your curriculum ended up being - I pretty much proceeded down the software path, especially in image/video processing.

Sort of, but without the heavy math & systems design courses. Basically, I ended up with first 2.5 years of a CompSci program mixed with the middle 2 years of EE, with a couple things thrown in to tie it all together.

[Akhlut]

BSc in Biology, meaning bare bones stats class for me, and algebra and trig from high school, and as I haven't had much use beyond arithmetic and simple geometry for a long time, my math skills are not too great anymore.

[Count Chocula]

72% of the respondents have had calculus or better.

I can't help but wonder what this poll would reveal at spacebattles.com, dailykos.com, or michellemalkin.com.

[RogueIce]

Up to Pre-calc Trig and Pre-calc Algebra. I tried calculus but that just didn't work out.

Though I'm very much of the "use it or lose it" type. I probably couldn't do half of what I learned off the top of my head if you just threw the problem at me. If I went to dig up my textbooks and make some practice runs and all that I probably could do it again. Of course I'd forget it all after a month or two of not using it again, so there you go.

Sure I can do the more basic stuff, but overall I guess I'm not a math-centric person.

[Alferd Packer]

Degree in computer science, whose math requirements were Calc 1 and Calc 2 (everything up to more integration that you could shake a stick at, series, Taylor polynomials, and probably some other crap), a year of discrete structures, and a semester of linear algebra.

I'm almost certain that I've forgotten all of it, eight years removed from it as I am, but I'm also almost certain that I could be doing at least basic calculus in a few hours if I had a textbook to go over, because I can feel it sitting just outside of reach in my brain, and a quick refresher would probably bring the basics back with little issue.

[Spin Echo]

PhD in physics. To be honest, I don't feel like I remember as much of the math I learned as I should. I took differential equations when I was 15 and then I didn't have an opportunity to take any higher math courses until university 3 years later. By that point, my math was rather rusty. I could do the math I needed for other courses, but I felt a little intimidated about going up against other student in pure math classes who had the material fresh in their minds. I wish we had lived nearer to a large university so I could have kept up going with math classes throughout high school.

You are an experimentalist?

Yeah. I'm by no means deficient in math and I still know more than most people. I just get this feeling like I had my mathematical peak at 14.

[Edi]

Back before I failed the computer engineering school, I did manage to take and pass all math courses up to third year save one (statistics and probability). All the way up to integral calculus, including the Laplace, Fourier and Z transforms, though I have forgotten how to do most of them. I had an eaiser time understanding integral calculus than differential, or at least some aspects of it, but it was a struggle.

Probabilities and statistics has always been my bane in mathematics because even though I can do the very simple stuff, I ALWAYS screw up whenever things get more complex. I have no trouble understanding ow it works when the process is presented to me, but getting from point A to point B on my own is a fucking nightmare.

Linguistics for me by preference, please...

[Isolder74]

Integral calculus

They make almost all Engineers take it. Then we use the tables to actually solve stuff.

[SCRawl]

B.Sc in physics, with all that implies. I managed to pass all of my math courses, but it wasn't my strong suit. That's probably why I stopped at a bachelor's degree.

[Terralthra]

72% of the respondents have had calculus or better.

I can't help but wonder what this poll would reveal at spacebattles.com, dailykos.com, or michellemalkin.com.

True, but the median poll-respondent has had only up through integral calculus, which (depending on where you live in the world and how much you applied yourself) is the top end of high school math. This poll says, to me, what I already would've guessed: Most of the population of SD.n has graduated from high school, with a decent, perhaps above-average, percentage of hard science college students/graduates.

[Feil]

Detailing in post:
Partial degree in physics, which may end up being a degree in math with a physics concentration & minor.

[Zac Naloen]

My education in Maths got as far as things like differentation. It was never called calculus or anything like that in my classes that I recall so I have no idea beyond that.

I've probably forgotten it by now, but maths was never a subject I applied myself to anyway I was more liberal arts i.e English, Theatre etc. Science so far as the theory I was more than capable but it wasn't where my interests lay so I didn't do A-Level. As such the maths never really became a major part of it for me. I can do algebra, long division etc still now the basics have stuck with me.


I could work out the equation originally posted in the previous thread if I had some prodding for the technique, i'm out of practise more than anything.

[The Vortex Empire]

I'm in the middle of High School Geometry right now. Easy stuff.

[Falkenhayn]

I top out at highschool trig and algebra. I took cryptography as my GenEd math during undergrad, but that's all laws of exponents.

[Tribble]

I took high school trig and algebra, but I sucked at it, so i put myself at arithmetic . Is this a poll of the education received, or your competence level?

[muse]

Ummm...I can count to ten!

[Karrick]

I started college in an engineering program. I passed the basic calc classes (integrals, derivatives, series/sequences, some other stuff) and multivariable calculus. I did poorly, but not so poorly I failed. I tried differential equations, but I choked on that at roughly the same time as I choked on some mid-level EE courses. Intro to Semiconductor Devices made me cry. Electronics 1 wasn't much better. It didn't help that all the lab equipment, through no fault of my own, would not work properly around me. Almost like I emitted some sort of field. Having since switched majors to "International Studies", I can still take integrals and derivatives and added a basic stats course. Anything more complicated than that and I would throw my calc book at you and tell you to solve it yourself. Voted partial degree, btw.

[Dave]

I remember doing differential and integral calculus in high school, but I got a D in that class, mostly because I didn't do much homework. I worked hard in college at trigonometry, but I still had to take it twice. I got tired of beating it into my head (math is the only subject that I lock up on in tests. Rearranging big equations just doesn't click.) and so I've switched out of engineering to IST, with a plan to get a minor in comp-sci.

I can't count how many times I've wished I could do it well, though. If I could, I'd be an engineer. Of what, I don't know.

I selected Integral Calculus, by the way.

[Surlethe]

I took high school trig and algebra, but I sucked at it, so i put myself at arithmetic . Is this a poll of the education received, or your competence level?

The idea is that education received is a rough measure of competence, since presumably, if you've learned about a particular level of math, it won't take more than several hours and a textbook to brush back up on it to some level of competence. For instance, when Olrik posted as a problem x''=Ax, I had forgotten how to find a general solution off the top of my head, but it didn't take me more than five minutes and a quick Wikipedia check to remember.

[Tribble]

Of course, one could still have received a certain level of education in math and yet still be pretty incompetent at it (I wouldn't brag about my Trig skills if I just passed with the min mark required) but I see your point. Thanks for clearing that up.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I did experimental statistics and probability as a psych student, before changing degrees in midstream, but I was very bad at it- one of the reasons I did end up changing.

Integral calculus in secondary school, but I'd definitely need to hit the textbooks before doing much with it.

[Murazor]

Economics. Studied some differential calculus in high school and got a crash course in statistics and integral calculus during my first year. It wasn't particularly easy, but I somehow managed to pass it. Of course, I have had no serious opportunity to use it since I left college and I more than a bit rusty.

[thejester]

I took maths as long as it was compulsory (up until Year 10) and the in Year 11 did math methods. I hated it and probably only passed thanks to the kindness of a teacher. Dropped it for Year 12 and now I've just finished a double History/Politics major in Arts.

It was kind of sad because prior to that I'd really enjoyed maths, and the satisfaction of doing and solving equations. As time progressed, however, the complexity of what we were learning and its lack of relevance to day-to-day life meant maths lost its luster. It's like the equation Mike posted earlier; I learnt how to do them (though had since forgotten) but when doing so it always struck me that this equation had been written to be solved by me. It had no real world bearing. Obviously it's a skill in maths that you need to have when you're an engineer or something similar. But for me? I don't think I'd ever used anything I'd learnt from beyond Year 7-8, when we learnt algebra.

[Lonestar]

Trig is about as far as I got in High School, and now that I'm back at college after a 7 year interim the Way Back machine has been activated and I'm down to Algebra II.

[fnord]

Did the basics - differential/integral single and multivariate calculus, PDEs, ODEs, a heap of analysis, linear algebra, computational maths up the wazoo (almost another accidental minor), stats (the aforementioned accidental minor), discrete maths (much nerd rage there), mathematical modelling (applying the theoretical stuff was a blast, especially cooking CPUs).