<p>Can anyone explain why people consider Duke math to be so brutal? I know they do not want to have a ton of math majors so the scale is not too good, but what prevents people from doing well? Is it ridiculously hard tests, horrible professors, too much work, or a combination of both? Also, how hard are the math labs?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>bump 10char</p>
<p>From my perspective, I don’t think it was that brutal. I took the Math 104/105 sequence, which was intended for math majors, even though I’m not majoring in math. There was a decent amount of homework in Math 104, and a lot of proofs, but the workload was manageable, and the tests weren’t anything unreasonable. I would say the weekly homework in Math 104 took about 5-10 hours to complete. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I haven’t taken Math 31/32/41/103, and I heard those classes can be tough, not because the material is hard, but because of the curve, and because it’s so easy to make small mistakes especially when you’re under time pressure. In terms of labs, I believe only the 31/32/41 classes have labs. A lot of people had advised that if you have AP credit for BC, which many people do, to just skip directly to 103 if you can. I think some people just take 31/32 even though they have the credit, so they set the curve a lot higher, and the same goes for Econ 51.</p>
<p>I’ve taken the following for Engineering.</p>
<p>Math 32 (Mistake, skip it with AP credit, which I did not)
Math 103
Math 107
Math 108
Math 135
Math 136
and few more STA classes</p>
<p>The lower math classes from Math 32 to Math 108 are not fair. Since a huge number of students take these lower level math classes, some sections of the class are taught by lecturers (mostly post-doc PhD), while others are taught by professors. </p>
<p>Lecturers are not inferior to professors but when there are so many sections, significant differences in instructional quality naturally occurs. In fact my best math professor was a post-doc Lecturer for Math 108. I think when I took Math 103, one professor wrote the final while all sections took the same final (although we took our professor’s midterm, so the expectation for the class just suddenly shifts for the final). In the Physics department, when I took Physics 63, all the professors came together to write a final.</p>
<p>Additionally, when I took Math 32, my section of the class had a daily quiz that counted for like for 25% of our final grade. Most other sections did not have daily quizzes, and I believed one section had weekly quizzes. Also, for this class, we were graded by our professor’s grading scales and point distribution systems (although they claimed that by the end of the semester, the average and distribution of the grades across all sections were the same. And please, I’m an #$@$ing stat minor, there is no way that they could have applied a fair, only linear transformation, to make all the distributions approximately equal).</p>
<p>I think the problem with Duke Math is just that there is no coherency and organization within the department. Keep in mind that I took most of these intro classes 3 years ago. It also doesn’t help that most Duke math classes have a B/B- average/curve.</p>
<p>/end rant</p>
<p>wow; i’m glad i read your post. my son loves duke, but wants to be a math/comp sci major. sounds like he’d be better off at u of chic, jh, or cal, right? would love your input. thanks.</p>
<p>I can’t speak about Math but Computer Science is one of the best departments at Duke at the undergraduate level. There are graduates from the Class of 2011 going to PhD programs at Harvard, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Illinois, etc. I’ve heard glowing things about the Physics department as well.</p>
<p>It sounds like the Math department isn’t as spectacularly run but I’m sure its alright. Duke has more top 5 Putnam finishes than any schools besides Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and Caltech so there are clearly some really smart students who study Math here.</p>
<p>@smccoz</p>
<p>The math department is just run poorly (and keep in mind my experiences are from 3-4 years ago when I was a freshmen/sophmore). But, higher level math (and stat) classes are taught by professors who love teaching. My experience with them have been very positive.</p>
<p>Duke CS is very good from what I have observed and heard. If your son likes the school, don’t let a few introductory math classes scare him off.</p>
<p>And one more tidbit of advice that I want to add is that: your son should be choosing a school based on the culture of the school. For example, Duke is extremely pre-professional school. It seems like everyone is going into business and finance, eventually getting an MBA, or going to medical school.</p>
<p>Focus less on the rankings and the strength of all the CS/math departments. All the stuff one learns as an undergraduate will pretty much be the same, whether it is at Duke or at Iowa State University. Choose where he wants to be for the next 4 years.</p>
<p>The problems with Duke math have probably been exaggerated. I did Math 31 and although I didn’t do spectacularly, and should probably have used AP credit, the class wasn’t unmanagable by any means. I must reiterate what noob said, if your son likes Duke he should definitely attend, these minor problems plague all universities. We at Duke are just more open about our shortcomings and highlight them in the interest of full disclosure. Duke is a great school and your son should definitely attend if he is inclined towards doing so.</p>
<p>so how many kids are in the multivariable math class? diff q? real analysis? just curious how much smaller the classes are than at berkeley</p>
<p>All of the multivariable classes I think are 30 students each, and about 10-15 sections per semester.</p>