There needs to be more resources for self-learning. Solutions need to be provided for problems, with clear explanations. It's a different mindset from a formal academic setting, where there's a strong focus on cheating prevention.
It took like 5 minutes on the phone to even explain to them that I'm reading the book for self learning purposes. Like they'd never encountered such a thing. Even after explaining, they wouldn't let me have the solutions.
I ended up just going on the black market, and finding some anonymous person to sell me the solutions on WhatsApp for $25.
Agreed. It's frustrating to solve a problem and being unable to check if it is correct. It's even more frustrating knowing that if you had the answer, it would help you to solve the problem. Sometimes the answer pushes you in the right direction to figure out how to solve the problem.
> with clear explanations.
Hopefully separate from the answers.
For programming exercises, we should be given datasets so that we can tests whether our code works or not. Heck books should provide links to unit tests.
For example, we need to find ways to filter out noise from signal, or to connect scattered bits of knowledge from various sources to get intelligible solutions to problems (most problems can be solved by googling around, especially in maths/physics, because people of all levels have been asking/answering questions for Internet points e.g. on Stack Exchange & cie for many years now, but — take it as a feature — you have to work a little to get there).
EDIT: regarding solutions, it's not just about preventing cheating, it's because teachers wants you to do the work. The point isn't necessarily to succeed in solving problems, but more to have you try, get creative, etc.
Perseverance is crucial to move forwards. But they could still provide clear and/or progressive solutions, I fully agree.
> It's a different mindset from a formal academic setting, where there's a strong focus on cheating prevention.
What? Who cares about cheating prevention, most of my classes had oral exams, you can't cheat there.
>how many questions are asked?
Totally depends on the subject and how the exam goes.
>What's it like in general?
Your professor is poking you with questions. Usually he has prepared some general questions and then asks follow ups. It might go something like this. "What is X Theorem? What does it represent geometrically? Does conditions Z need to be true for the Theorems to hold? Can you name a counter example? How does the proof (discussed in lecture) look like? How exactly do you construct that part? Where do you need that condition? Here is a similar theorem (not discussed in class), can you outline a proof for this?"
Or use Wolfram.
Still searching, so if anyone has any tips I'd love to hear
Of course, in the real world we don't give up on integrals just because they can't be expressed in terms of elementary functions. Usually we also check if the result happens to be a hypergeometric function, such as a Bessel function. If you want to get started on understanding hypergeometric functions, maybe try reading [3] (as well as the tangentially related book "A = B" [4]).
[1] https://www.cs.ru.nl/~freek/courses/mfocs-2012/risch/Integra... [2] https://mathoverflow.net/questions/374089/does-there-exist-a... [3] https://www.math.ru.nl/~heckman/tsinghua.pdf [4] https://www2.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/AeqB.html