Advice on how to handle a difficult math class

[BCEagle91]

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<p>It’s just the way it is once real math begins and it starts becoming
proof heavy. Students either get it or they don’t.</p>

<p>It’s the nature of the field. There’s a reason why the math wizards
get it.</p>

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<p>There are some students that get exposed to it while they are fairly
young. In the references that I listed, note that some of the materials
are from K-6. First Course in Mathematical Logic was aimed at gifted
fifth-graders.</p>

<p>There are many students that take Algebra I, II and Geometry in
middle-school and you could follow that up with Honors courses instead
of AP courses. The AP courses are geared towards applications (my
opinion) while the old, traditional Honors courses are theory-based.
I think that most high-schools that offer Calculus lean heavily
towards AP as that’s the recognized college-level course.</p>

<p>You do have math wizards that can pick this stuff up quickly but I’d
guess that most of the students that do very well have just seen it
before.</p>

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<p>She is freshman and took CALC BC as a junior and did very well on the
AP test and the class.</p>

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<p>From the Original Post:</p>

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<p>My daughter is taking an honors version of the math class that she
took in 12th grade.</p>

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<p>From these two I assume that she took multivariable in her senior year
which is good.</p>

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<p>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>

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<p>I think that this was part of the standards movement back in the late
1980s and early 1990s. By the late 1990s, proofs became harder to find
in high-school math texts.</p>

<p>BTW, here’s a link to problem sets from Phillips Exeter Academy for
Math 2 (I assume the sophomore year). They are nice enough to provide
sample problem sets so that other school districts can use them (for
a fee?). You can find many proof problems in the psets by searching
for “prove”.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.exeter.edu/documents/math2all.pdf[/url]”>http://www.exeter.edu/documents/math2all.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It may well be that the vast majority of high-schools don’t cover
proofs anymore. I don’t think that it wins any brownie points on state
standards and college entrance exams and I think that most students
that go to college don’t really need to know how to do proofs.</p>

<p>Math, Computer Science, some engineering students, Actuaries,
etc. need to know how to do them but most other majors don’t.</p>

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<p>I know that it is not cool to complain about teachers, and fwiw, she’s
usually not a complainer.</p>

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<p>My son complains to me about some of his teachers and my comment to
him is: welcome to the real world. At his school, the professors are
hired for their research and grant procurement skills first and their
teaching skills third or fourth. There is a lot of stuff that is
dropped on the floor in industry but products get designed,
manufactured and shipped. Even if the process isn’t ideal. I tell my
son that this happens in college too. That probably doesn’t make him
any happier about the problems but at least he understands why things
work the way that they do. I just encourage him to do all that he can
do on his side to work around the problems. If he’s doing his level
best then I’m happy and I tell him that he should be happy too [even
though he might not be].</p>

<p>One aspect of doing all that he can includes getting the book before
the course starts and working through the exercises on his own. This
results in far less new material during the actual course. I have
heard of some students sitting in on classes that they plan to take
the following year so that the material is somewhat familiar when they
take it for credit.</p>

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<p>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>

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<p>Our son had a professor for statistics that had never taught it before -
he was basically two weeks ahead of the students. He did pull it off well
though. I imagine that this happens a lot and that some professors can
do a good job at it and others have a hard time with it.</p>

<p>I think that a grad student should be able to teach a class - they should
know the material quite well and know the course and grading process well.
They may have had a little less practice and less research experience but
that doesn’t always matter in teaching.</p>

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<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>

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<p>In this case, it might have been more useful looking at tests from
prior years which many professors make available to their students to
gauge their difficulty compared to quizzes and problem sets. I can’t
really comment on the differences without seeing them but I’d suggest
that your daughter ask one of the students that did very well on the
test what the delta between the quizzes and the tests were.</p>