Hacker News Reader

Comment by thebeardedone | Hacker News Reader

Amusingly I had a similar experience while holding a tutorial for math 2 at my university. After an hour a student asked me what the integral symbol is, as if she has never seen it before. Now I do not find this very tragic as I would gladly recap anything and working throughout my studies I know one might not be able to get through all of the content, but good luck studying when you are missing the basics to even understand the problem at hand.

View on HN

In freshman physics at Caltech I cancelled out the d's in dx/dt. But I knew something was terribly wrong, and I sought out the professor after lecture. He asked me if I knew what a derivative was, and I said no. He suggested I come to his office later.

He gave me a half hour lecture illustrating the basics of integration and differentiation. It was the most useful half hour of my life, and it got me through the semester. Prof. Gomez pretty much saved my @ss.

No, my public high school had not offered calculus in any way, shape or form. My fellow freshmen couldn't believe I had come to Caltech utterly ignorant of calculus.

I had other problems too - did not know how to study, did not know how to take notes, did not know how to organize my time, I'd never had to work at school before, thought I could skip lecture and wing the exams, etc.

It took until my sophomore year to get my act together. Fortunately, freshman year at Caltech was pass/fail, and I barely scraped by that year.

What were some of the methods you developed and used?

It was straightforward:

1. attend all lectures

2. do all of the homework on time

3. make sure I understood how to do 100% of the homework problems

4. get help with anything I didn't understand

5. write down everything that the prof wrote on the blackboard

6. clean up my handwriting so it was legible

7. lectures/homework/studying always came first

Exactly what worked for me back then, except in Chemistry in addition to copying from the board I also wrote down everything the professor said along with what I thought about what was presented and was writing so fast it made No.6 completely impossible.

Ever since, when working with someone who has difficult-to-decipher handwriting I advise them that their handwriting is just fine for themselves, so when you need others to read it correctly, in those situations approach it like calligraphy instead.

Naturally I typed my homework and did "calligraphy" on exams.

Also the homework contributed so little credit toward your final grade that a single wrong answer on a midterm or final counted against you mathematically more so than turning in no homework at all, so some good students treated it like they could make up for many hours shortage on homework in just five minutes of the time spent acing the exams. But it turned out to be impossible to get an A for the course if all of the homework was not completed and all correct as well. This was by design and for students to figure out for themselves. They didn't give very many A's in Chemistry.

At Caltech, the grade was totally based on the midterm and final exams. The homework only counted if you were on the boundary between one grade and another. In fact, the homework often wasn't even graded, you'd do the homework and then attend a "recitation" session where a grad student would go over it with the students.

The point of the homework was to teach you the material. Skip it at your peril. Mastering it meant you were reasonably prepared for the exams.

If you were allowed in a calculus based physics course (some schools offer non-calc versions for non-science/engineering students) without ever being asked if you had taken calculus, there was an issue here other then you not having taken calculus. Calculus is not part of the standard curriculum at many US high schools. I attended one of the top 10 engineering schools in the US, and it was not that unusual for students to need to take calc before taking their first physics course. This kind of basic prerequisite verification is something any major university should be doing.

Calculus was required in pretty much all of the freshmen classes. There was no possibility of deferring that in order to learn calculus - it should have been done before the fall. Remedial classes were not offered.

As far as I recall, I was the only freshman who did not know calculus. I can only infer from that that I did not get the message, or ignored it. I certainly received no useful guidance from high school.

Thank you for the reply but sadly there is another issue.

Similarly to you, I was educated in North America where ironically integrals were not part of the curriculum, but when I arrived in Europe I had to take 3 entrance exams: English (the exam is very awkward for the native speakers, you get 2 questions: what is your name and why are you hear after they notice that you do not have an accent), math (their curriculum with the missing content I did not have) and German.

As I understand, if a local does not have a matura in the required fields, they have to take similar examinations which should prepare them.

I think you had a very nice professor though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com