<p>My daughter is taking an honors version of the math class that she took in 12th grade. She was sure she could manage it since she had taken the class already. The school had apparently assigned a graduate student to teach the class right before the start of school. I don't know the reason for the last minute assignment, but it seems that this teacher is horribly disorganized because he really didn't have a chance to make a teaching plan. To make matters worse, the TA and the teacher are not in sync with what they are teaching or assigning for homework. The TA has unreasonable expectations where he assigns a problem set at 3 and gives the students 24 hours to turn it in. </p>
<p>The teacher obviously felt there was a problem because in the middle of the semester he had the students fill out a survey where they voiced their discontent. Unfortunately, nothing was done about it and my daughter is suffering to get through this class. She spends the majority of her time for this class but sadly is not seeing the rewards. She bombed her midterm and is mighty nervous about the final. Does she have legitimate concerns that she can take to her adviser or should she just suck it up and hope to not fail the class? She is doing well in her other classes but this one class is causing her such stress and we want to give her some sound advice. Any thoughts are appreciated.</p>
<p>bogibogi, the teacher is a graduate student and the TA is also a graduate student? Most universities do not have graduate students in charge of honors sections of math, even at the introductory level. Perhaps the faculty member who was supposed to teach the course became ill at the last minute? I would recommend that she talk to her adviser about the course, not to complain, but to request advice about it. She could find out, for instance, whether it is common to have grad students in charge of the class. If not, could she drop the class now and re-enroll later? How much math does she need for her intended major?</p>
<p>Also, it’s a typical pattern to have a week for a university-level problem set. I had one math class where the problems were due at the next class (48 hours later), but never one where problems had to be done within 24 hours.</p>
<p>Is it too late to drop the class? I always tell my kids to have that drop date burned in their memory. The last thing you want to have happen to you is deciding to drop the class and finding out that you missed the deadline! :eek:</p>
<p>I would go in to see the teacher and ask how the curve is looking. In other words, if everyone else if bombing the class, then her low scores may earn her a B- or a C.</p>
<p>What would you hope from talking with her adviser?</p>
<p>Have you daughter join a study group and visit the teachers during all office hours and practice sessions. I suppose a last option is to get a tutor.</p>
<p>Complaining about the teachers isn’t productive, though her complaints may be valid.</p>
<p>QuantMech, I was also surprised that a graduate student was teaching Honors Multi-variable Calc. And yes, the TA is also a graduate student. My daughter enjoys math and was considering it for her major, but this has been such a bad experience that she is hesitant.</p>
<p>ellemenope, yes it is too late to drop the class. I was hoping that if she met with the adviser, he would make an exception and let her drop considering the circumstances. I may have her talk to the teacher first to see if there is a curve. Since she has invested so much time and energy into this class it would be a blessing if she could somehow salvage it.</p>
<p>Son had two lab sections where the grad students that they hired did a poor job. Both had difficulty with English and one wasn’t grading anything. My son spoke to the lab director in both cases and the lab director provided more supervision over the grad students and modified grades (not sure how) to compensate for the grad student issues.</p>
<p>A good tutor can be really helpful. If your daughter finds that the math department tutors are all busy by this point in the semester, she might be able to get help from a grad student or post-doc in physics–usually they have a good command of the material, even the proof-based ideas in honors multi-variable calculus. She could also ask in the dorm about senior undergrads. Another option would be to ask in the math department. It is possible that recently retired faculty might be willing to provide some assistance. I think checking around for a good tutor would be well worth the trouble/expense. Best of luck to her!</p>
<p>Is there a math tutoring center? Multivariable Calc is a first year math class, so any college math tutor should be able to handle it.</p>
<p>How are the other students in the class doing?</p>
<p>I’m guessing that an honors multivariable calc class will be all about the proofs. Is this the first time your daughter has had a math class that is about proofs rather than calculations? If so, she’s facing a big adjustment. She should expect the class to be hard for her, but if she continues in math she will realize that math classes for majors are always about the proofs.</p>
<p>I still have the textbook for Honors Multivariable way back when at BC. It’s interesting to compare it to a modern textbook - the old textbook had very few practical applications. The modern textbook is chock full of them. Class went like this: review homework proofs, do the lesson consisting of proofs, assign homework.</p>
<p>Students should see proofs in high-school in geometry and precalculus classes so they should have some familiarity with them. If they didn’t get proofs in high-school, then they may be at a big disadvantage.</p>
<p>My students are taking lower level math classes; however, there is a free site where students can search a concept and the guy gives an example. It is called Khan Academy. I second the suggestions for getting a tutor and heading to the math center if the college has one.</p>
<p>With proofs, you generally need to build up a body of techniques and have some amount of practice with it. A 1-year sequence in Geometry provides a good background for this though I think that a lot of the proof part of geometry has been watered down over the past 30 years.</p>
<p>She has never done proofs before this semester, but is managing fine in her Linear Algebra and Discrete Math classes, both of which are quite proof-heavy.</p>
<p>This is probably her hardest class because on top of learning the regular Calc III material, she was also introduced to set theory, function theory, complex numbers, and linear algebra.</p>
<p>Her biggest complaint is that the teacher and the TA are not working together to make sure the students are learning the material. She does well on the problem sets but they are not preparing her for the actual exams.</p>
<p>She is working with a tutor and gets a lot out of it. Maybe she just has to concede that she isn’t cut out to do this level of work.</p>
<p>My daughter says that most of the students are struggling in the class, but there are a handful of math whizzes who manage to ace the tests. Would anyone know whether instructors would set a curve where they eliminate the top scoring students? Thanks.</p>
<p>This was our world last year. Made it through the first semester of math, dropped the second because it was so bad. As a result, S is somewhat changing his plan of focus for his major. </p>
<p>Good suggestions above - try to be as encouraging as you can. I sometimes think these math classes are made for those few true math wizards and everyone else is left to struggle. :(</p>
<p>I’d have to say it’s doubtful that a class curve would ignore the high achievers. </p>
<p>D2 has a similar complaint in her upper level math courses. There are a handful of kids who, when they show up in her class, she just groans because she knows they are going to ace everything and make it harder for everyone else to do well on the curve. (And it’s a fairly small school so they tend to show up in her math classes regularly.)</p>
<p>D1 (also a math major) was at a much bigger school, but she also found that there are just some people who are brilliant at math and when they end up in your class, it’s (as she put it) “just gonna suck”.</p>
<p>Tell your D to hang in there. (BTW, both girls disliked their theoretical proof-based classes, but then again they’re both in applied math.)</p>
<p>A lot of university courses use Rosen’s Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications and the first chapter is on proofs (7th edition). Then comes set theory, etc. So that course should provide some proof background. But it’s a lot easier when you’ve been doing proofs for a few years than if you have to learn proofs and the particular material at the same time. That’s one of the criticisms of the old-fashioned proof-based geometry course - that you’re learning how to do proofs and geometry at the same time which can be confusing. You do need to learn it somewhere (if you’re going to be a math or computer science major) and earlier is probably better. There are even some curricular materials that introduce proofs in elementary school (Sets and Numbers by Suppes and Hill). A good geometry text with thorough coverage of doing proofs is in Jacobs Geometry (from the 1970s).</p>
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<p>Is she a freshman? If so, then that’s a lot of new material at a pace that she might not be used to. Those types of courses accelerate in difficulty and material through the semester and students might not be used to that coming out of high school. If not, then she should be used to absorbing material at an accelerating pace.</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, I’d guess that every students gets a professor (or a bunch) like this in college. My son has told me about students having the same problems from the tutoring center. The professors ask stretch questions where you have to piece together a bunch of different concepts or they ask questions that weren’t covered in class or in the textbook - you’d have to be keeping up with current events in science to know the answer. One professor explained that there is such a wide variance in abilities that they have to toss in really hard problems to distinguish between an A and a B.</p>
<p>Our daughter had a class once where she asked us if she could withdraw. She had an A- average in it and it was a bit shocking to us that she wanted to drop the course. She gave her reasons (the professor had a bizarre personality) and we trusted her judgement. Our son has had many professors that were excellent researchers but awful at teaching.</p>
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<p>Good to hear.</p>
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<p>It might be a bit early to draw that conclusion. She’s had to absorb proofs in a very short period of time and tackly at least three hard classes.</p>
<p>I had a look at a random Honors Multivariable course (John Hopkins) and see that the prereq for Honors Linear Algebra is a B+ or better in Calc II or a 5 on the AP BC exam or passing Honors Single Variable Calculus (BTW, it sounds like a great course). Linear Algebra or Honors Linear Algebra is a co-requisite for Honors Multivariable Calculus. It would seem to me that some mention of the ability to do proofs should be a prerequisite for Honors LA or MC. The Honors Single Variable course uses Spivak’s text which is heavily proof-based. Just doing the first chapter of Spivak (which doesn’t have an calculus material at all) would be a considerable challenge for the typical college student. Your daughter may be going up against students that took Honors Single Variable where they have a considerable background in doing proofs already.</p>
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<p>The only thing that would matter would be the particular curve that her professor uses. The syllabus would be the best place to look first. If the syllabus doesn’t say anything, then the best thing to do would be to ask the professor. The professor might not reveal the curve methodology or might work it out as it gets close to the end of the semester.</p>
<p>I’ve never heard him mention a course where the top students were dropped. I could perhaps understand if there were one person and I imagine that some formula that would discount outliers but if there are five (a handful) of students performing at a high level, then I’d expect less of an interest in removing them. In the old days, an A was for really outstanding work and five students getting As would be reasonable (in a class of say 30).</p>
<p>This may be particularly true if the student attended a high school that had the two year freshman calculus plan (AB one year, the rest of BC the following year, instead of teaching BC in one year at college pace immediately after precalculus).</p>
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<p>On the other hand, from what I remember of when I was in school, honors math courses in college tended to be populated mainly by those who were a semester or year ahead in math, so an honors sophomore level math course had mostly freshmen in it.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your encouraging comments and helpful advice.
BCEagle91, I especially appreciate your detailed analysis.</p>
<p>She is freshman and took CALC BC as a junior and did very well on the AP test and the class. Her high school failed her in not introducing proofs. She knows that she is at a clear disadvantage compared to those who had it in high school.</p>
<p>I know that it is not cool to complain about teachers, and fwiw, she’s usually not a complainer. She has nothing against them personally but sees that the circumstances under which the graduate student was urgently called to run the class, that maybe he wasn’t prepared as he should have been.</p>
<p>What is the purpose of problem sets? My understanding is that they are practice for the concepts taught in class. My daughter feels that that the TA and teacher are teaching two different classes. She does fine on quizzes which the TA gives and covers the problem set material, however, the midterm was made by the teacher which covered problems which left her totally clueless.</p>
<p>gravenewworld, so is it never possible to get it? How disappointing.</p>