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Just here to brag about my test score :)

Petrov

Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Oct 3, 2009
521
297
40
Western NY
I probably going to sound like a complete idiot or something but I just scored 98% on My Calculus 2 test. I am 30 years old, it took me a while to get where I am regarding to math today and I am pretty happy and proud.
Once I pass Calculus 2 I get my official pocket protector :)

524550-444-13.jpg
 
I probably going to sound like a complete idiot or something but I just scored 98% on My Calculus 2 test. I am 30 years old, it took me a while to get where I am regarding to math today and I am pretty happy and proud.
Once I pass Calculus 2 I get my official pocket protector :)

524550-444-13.jpg

Nice work....report back when you score 98% in Calc 3 or Discrete Mathematics. ;)
 
Congrats!!

Gawd that stuff was miserable!! I'm glad someone apparently likes it!!!!
 
Congrats!!

Gawd that stuff was miserable!! I'm glad someone apparently likes it!!!!

I hate it! It makes me miserable and frustrated and sometimes brings me to tears but I have to know it well if I am going to be an engineer.
 
Congratulations, you have now earned your reward: band aid.jpg




You can now wrap this around the bridge of your glasses, and wear your trophy of achievement in pride, honor, and distinction!
 
I HATED Discrete math!!!!!!! Give me any Calculus any day over that crap.

I did fairly well in Discrete and Calc II.... I received my lowest grade in Pre-calc. lol Likely due to getting used to the Freshman year, and going to a 7AM Mon-Wed-Fri class.
 
Congrats geek. You will never get laid now.
 
I did fairly well in Discrete and Calc II.... I received my lowest grade in Pre-calc. lol Likely due to getting used to the Freshman year, and going to a 7AM Mon-Wed-Fri class.

I took Discrete and Calc II at the same time, same days, within 2 hours of each other. That is what made it suck the most; two different ways of thinking.
 
Damn - yeah that would suck. Mine were different semesters. You'll enjoy this though....My senior year I said hell with math and took College Algebra - best and most fun class I ever took! :)
 
Congrats, that's a good score on a calculus final --people usually do really good with differentiation and then have problems with integration. I think I took those classes around that age too, and can verify that math is a young man's sport indeed. Calculus 3 is just the extension of 1 and 2 into 3 dimensions, but in 4 you'll learn some new stuff like vector fields and such (useful for shooting too). I'd do linear algebra prior to 4, but take 4 before differential equations or introduction to proofs (that's a VERY important math class).

Check this out, I doub't you've seen this yet but you know enough to appreciate it. You can play with this and unwind damn near much of math up to the 17th or 18th century with this, it's simple, beautiful and it includes ALL of the most important numbers: e^(i*pi)+1=0. It's Euler's identity and it comes from Euler's formula, look it up. I wish I'd known it earlier on, because if you understand it well, it's like having a mental cheat sheet.

I think the class I disliked the most was modern algebra. Yeah, definitely modern algebra. Analysis was my favorite, otherwise known as calculus 5-8 (you get two double decker pocket protectors and a pair of limited edition birth control glasses with extra thick plastic lenses complete with scotch tape bridges). Partial differential equations and Fourier analysis was also a lot of fun.

Enjoy school while it lasts, and I hope to god you aren't married right now. If you are, good luck with that, and don't take art or art history classes if you are easily tempted. I managed, but I doubt you're as ugly as I am. Good luck with your classes!
 
Congrats!

Im supposed to be doing my Calc II homework right now... I just dont get this class. No matter how hard I study and try I end up with a 60% on the tests...
 
Congrats. What gave me trouble was non Euclidean geometry. I mean Euclid is called the father of geometry, how can you have non Euclidean. An lines are supposed to be straight right? Not according to ne geometry.
 
Holy crap! I remember thinking that I could get some jumper wires, and give a circuit the "smoke test" a lot faster than doing Fourier analysis. Went back to finish my EE degree after doing radar repair in the Army.
 
Keep up the good work and earn that engineering degree. You will enjoy your job when you get it and the paycheck will be good as well.
 
I hate it! It makes me miserable and frustrated and sometimes brings me to tears but I have to know it well if I am going to be an engineer.
The absolute best calc instructor I had was an engineer, teaching at the university level was his "moonlighting job." He would say "don't even look at the textbook, it will only confuse you" and then explain it so anyone (almost) would understand it. You're in an elite group, less than 2% of the worlds population has studied calculus......................or at least that's what they kept telling me.
'
 
As a similar age returning student staring down calculus, I'd love any tips on how to get 'caught back up'...

If you are going through a particular curriculum, don't let yourself take the easy way out by moving on only after having learned how to do a problem. Learn why that method works and the basis for the equations and manipulations you are doing.

For example, most know the "power rule" - d/dx (X^n) = nX^(n-1) Once you know how to do it (put the exponent as a coefficient and subtract one from the exponent), you can do it without thinking and you can move on to the next topic. But many people have no clue how to derive the power rule - what makes it actually work for finding a derivative?

If you start with a standard calculus curriculum and then supplement with some gratuitous wikipedia reading or, better yet, finding some of the older text books that are mostly text, you can really crank through a lot of the lesser understood principles. Also, having a tutor really helps. The material is just new and different, and having someone to help with the explanation that is comfortable with the subject matter does help.

As an aside, I really didn't understand calculus fully until taking courses in real analysis, where you end up building up proofs to demonstrate how/why derivation and integration work. That stuff made my brain hurt, but it opened up an entirely new way of thinking about math. It's not numbers. It's logic. It's deductive reasoning. It's a set of rules that you establish and then learn where they will take you.
 
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Yea I recall my first calc class, everyone was saying wtf is this dude taking about? Later that night, the classic light bulb blinked on and I said ohhhhh now I understand. At break everyone else said I still don't understand wtf he is talking about so I tried to explain it to them. They started laughing and said that that was a great impression of Mr. Crusty. After that I pretended to not understand around them. I didn't have to pretend in calc 2 since most of them switch to liberal arts or something. I think the ones who didn't make it through liberal arts went into law enforcement :)
 
Keep up the good work and earn that engineering degree. You will enjoy your job when you get it and the paycheck will be good as well.

Or if you live in the real world or at least in my part of the U.S. you'll struggle to find a job as the market is FULLY saturated with engineers mostly because we give so many student visas to people who will take extremely low salaries just so they can convert their student visa to a work visa and stay in the U.S. and you'll have to get a masters and specialize in something to really stand a chance at making anything over your student loan bill.

Being that you're in Calc II, you must be a freshman or maybe a sophomore and at that point you really aren't in any specific type of engineering yet. Now would be a good time to go look at what the job market is really like for whatever type of engineering you want to do and be honest with yourself about your endgame and job prospects. Engineering isn't what it used to be, you're not automatically guaranteed a job upon graduation so do some research over the winter break.
 
So it is possible....I've got a calc I final on monday. All I need is 50% or better to pass the class. I'm feelin pretty good about my chances.
 
Or if you live in the real world or at least in my part of the U.S. you'll struggle to find a job as the market is FULLY saturated with engineers mostly because we give so many student visas to people who will take extremely low salaries just so they can convert their student visa to a work visa and stay in the U.S. and you'll have to get a masters and specialize in something to really stand a chance at making anything over your student loan bill.

Being that you're in Calc II, you must be a freshman or maybe a sophomore and at that point you really aren't in any specific type of engineering yet. Now would be a good time to go look at what the job market is really like for whatever type of engineering you want to do and be honest with yourself about your endgame and job prospects. Engineering isn't what it used to be, you're not automatically guaranteed a job upon graduation so do some research over the winter break.


Actually just the opposite here in Michigan. Yes Michigan, the most economically depressed state in the union. In the utility filed we can't get enough engineers. Every time we bring in a fresh faced college grad from a foreign country they may make it a year at the most. Most can't handle the field work and they all think their work a 50k starting salary with no experience. Our best engineers are usually kids that grew up in a rural area and can think on their feet to make decisions. Give me a B,C average farm kid any day over a straight A foreigner or book smart nerd.

Just remember, internships count for a lot when employers are looking for new engineers. That and work ethic. Congrats on the Calc II test and stay with it.
 
OP - Congrats, you're getting there now ;-)

it's simple, beautiful and it includes ALL of the most important numbers: e^(i*pi)+1=0. It's Euler's identity and it comes from Euler's formula, look it up. I wish I'd known it earlier on, because if you understand it well, it's like having a mental cheat sheet.

This is probably the most important piece of advice in the thread. I've taken a lot of math for an engineer, if ever in doubt, bring it back to First Principles and work forward from there.

Give me a B,C average farm kid any day over a straight A foreigner or book smart nerd.

This is a damn close second... I have a hard time explaining this to my manager. "But he/she has a 3.97 overall"

Great, what internships did they do, did they ever work in a shop making things or are they a desk engineer?
 
Actually just the opposite here in Michigan. Yes Michigan, the most economically depressed state in the union. In the utility filed we can't get enough engineers.

Yeah, that's a lot different from here. I'd venture to guess that because everyone seems to want to live here you have a supply and demand problem and pay rates are adjusted accordingly. Whereas MI in your case sounds like it has the opposite problem. I think we have something like 6 schools dumping Engineers out just along the I-25 corridor and nobody ever leaves this state, even the kids with student visas never want to leave so you so the market is simply flooded with engineers and because of that nobody pays a market wage. I was lucky but I'm still switching fields because there's no upward mobility in engineering (at least in CO).
 
You have a right to be proud of what you have accomplished. My Calc classes a challenge and, as was said here already, probably because I could only get Calc 1 at 7:30am as a freshman. I was lucky I had Calc in HS to help me get through some of the basics. Actually I was lucky to get through my freshman year at all.

Congrats and keep up the good work
 
Congrats on the test! That stuff is tough.

I'm a Flight Engineer that does no engineering per a math sense at Moody AFB. Only math I do is do we have enough power from the engines based on temps and pressure altitude and Kentucky Windage when shooting mini guns and .50 cal machine guns from the helicopter.

Stick with it and good luck.
 
Mind if jog everyones minds, maybe OP can help me here.
Evaluate the indefinite integral ∫sin^3(ø)cos^5(ø)dø
Work with me here and pretend ø=theta.
Can I work a problem like this out in terms of sin OR cos?
I tried both ways and got:
1/8(cos^8(ø))-1/6(cos^6(ø))+c
and
1/4(sin^4(ø))-1/3(sin^6(ø))+1/8(sin^8(ø))+c
I am 100% sure the sin one is correct but if I did my math correctly would the cos answer be a valid answer?
 
Vector Calc was the toughest for me, but that may have been because I had a pot smoking dip-shit for a teacher. Good job on the final, Calc II was my favorite. Not sure what kind of engineer you want to be but if you haven't already I'd give mechanical a hard look. Mining engineering is also experiencing a resurgence.