<p>Any remedies to deal with headaches? I just did 2 sections of math 53 for midterm, and I have a splitting headache...20 more sections to go. fml.</p>
<p>also, any tips on quality studying for math courses? i feel like i have to do every single problem, which i suppose contributes to my headaches lol.</p>
<p>
what many students fail to understand is that despite all the lessons in the book and despite all of the topics talked about in class, reality trumps this “ideal world” where students master every possible concept about the subject.</p>
<p>remember, your teacher is bound by certain rules when writing the test:
a) questions must be solvable
b) test must take no longer than 50 or 80 minutes (depending if class is 1 hour or 1.5 hours)
c) test answers mustn’t be too intricate or subjective (in order to avoid grading inconsistencies between graders)
d) teachers’ job is to teach. if YOU were going to write a math test, say on multiplication, would you write a bunch of Qs on addition? a bunch of Qs on exponents? a bunch of Qs on tensor products? no, no, and NO! </p>
<p>w.r.t. (d), there are actually VERY FEW “big hitter” topics that are 100% going to be on that midterm.
can you name em?</p>
<p>i’d bet my left leg that there will be a Q on gradients. i’d bet my right leg there will be a Q related to graphs f(x,y), level curves, or lagrange multipliers. and i’d bet my middle leg that there’s a line to write your name on the test. </p>
<p>my point is: study the obvious things that will be on the test. stop wasting your time trying to get one extra point on the test by memorizing the whole book and half-a**ing the key topics. </p>
<p>it’s not about how much you study, it’s about how WELL you study. be smart about time management here.
fyl indeed, fyl so hard if you even dare to read all of those. if you’re really that paranoid SKIM at most. </p>
<p>sorry this post was just venting b/c you’ve completed what… 2/20 ~ 10% of your studying? but let me guess, you studied the FIRST 2 sections which is like them explaining the history of multivar calc and defining f(x,y) which is just a waste of space time and life force. so you’ve completed more like 2% of your studies for just ONE midterm. the inefficiency is mind boggling. sry for bashing.</p>
<p>and yeah, remedy to deal with headaches: man up or take a nap.</p>
<p>Best way to learn math is to solve math. Headache sucks, but you’re definitely preparing it right.</p>
<p>crowslayer, in the time you prepared that essay, i finished 4 more sections. my midterm isn’t until thursday. and yes, i like to prepare by doing a lot of problems…what is wrong with that? i’m not paranoid, so please, take your attitude elsewhere. lol. and no, the first two sections weren’t explaining the history of multi…it was more like paramaters and graphing polar coordinates, so ****.</p>
<p>just my 4 cents, suit yourself. you were the one asking for advice in the first place.</p>
<p>yeah, i asked for advice. you didn’t have to bash me like that. calm down</p>
<p>I haven’t taken one midterm yet and I have 18 units. One class of mine doesn’t have a midterm for another 3 weeks.</p>
<p>I think Crowslayer makes a good point. It’s not a bad idea to study everything by doing lots of problems, but when I took Math 53, I did 1-2 problems for every concept in the book. If I got them right on the first try, I didn’t bother to study it anymore since I could probably handle anything similar to that question come exam time.</p>
<p>But, if I didn’t get them right on the first try, then there was something I didn’t understand about that particularly concept. Depending on how important I thought it would be, I would either think to myself:</p>
<p>a) This stuff seems really fundamental, and he/she really seemed to focus on this in lecture. Must learn now.
b) He/she went over this concept briefly in class, but didn’t really focus on it. it’d be worth it to go over again, but not now, it might not be a big deal and I got most of the problem, just not the final answer. I should make sure I hit other topics first.
c) I didn’t know how to do this problem because he/she never talked about it in class. I’ll make a note of it and check with the Professor/GSI/syllabus to make sure we don’t need to know it.</p>
<p>yeah, i know crowslayer makes a good point. but he didn’t have to bash me haha. whatever. thanks though.</p>
<p>and yeah, thanks guys. eyeheartphysics, that seems like a good idea. yeah, now that i think about it, i honestly don’t think he is going to ask problems on polar curves or graphing that stuff. maybe more like gradients, maybe dot and cross products? and parametrization? I have frenkel if that matters.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine a Math 53 exam not in some shape, form or fashion not requiring you to use the dot/cross product.</p>
<p>yeah dot and cross products, gradients, and being able to take integrals in all coordinate systems, converting between coordinate systems and recognizing which system creates the easiest integral, solving things like approximate value of sqrt(253) by hand/paper using partial differentiation, and being able to change bounds on double/triple integrals to make an impossible integral possible to integrate. Those things I mentioned and vector calculus with it’s corresponding theorems is what I think is pretty much Math 53, and I’m guessing for this midterm you don’t need to know the latter yet.</p>
<p>Good luck OP!</p>