Math 104 vs. 114

<p>Im an incoming freshman to Penn. Please help me with this if u know…</p>

<p>I heard 114 is a difficult class in Fall because its full of hardcore ppl that placed out of 114 and therefore you can easily get screwed by the curve. Is this true? Also, are all the concepts of 104 completely necessary for 114? cuz I checked out the syllabus of the two and 40% of 114 seems to be new topics such as vectors, geometry of space.
If I have a few gaps from the 104 syllabus, would I be necessarily screwed by goin straight into 114? Or would I be fine if I would be willing to spend extra time studying for the class to fill in gaps WHILE being in 114?
Is 114 tested purely on concepts taught in 114 or do you get tests where random stuff from 104 suddenly appears?</p>

<p>I heard 104 is a class where a lot of ppl get bad grades for some strange reason, maybe the curve. Also that its really boring for anyone who is familiar with the concepts taught. Is 114 easier to succeed in if I would be willing to spend a lot of time studying for the class?</p>

<p>I had 790 on Sat I and 740 on Sat II Math 1, but I was too lazy to care much about my final year of math in high school and therefore I have gaps in 104 syllabus (although familiar with all the concepts). I never had a problem with Math when I actually cared about the class.</p>

<p>Should I go into 114 even without officially placing out of 104 and try to catch the few gaps? (My advisor said its possible, yet not recommended)</p>

<p>I truly think you can handle 114 without needing 104 (104 basically sharpens your integration skills and throws a bunch of series at you). But mind you, even the people who thought they were good at math in high school got screwed in 104. Only do 114 if you <em>know</em> you're pretty good at math - not just that you <em>think</em> you are. Recall the Neo vs. Morpheus fighting scene in Matrix I :D </p>

<p>You have good math scores but even people with dual 800's can get nailed because 104 is still harder math than SAT math. I don't think too much 104 stuff comes up in terms of test material, but it's good to be familiar with the concepts.</p>

<p>Thanks! But I mean, if someone gets screwed in 104, does it mean he would get a LOT more screwed in 114? Or is 104 just a weird hardcore-curve class?</p>

<p>114 is needed for intermediate Economics classes, which I might take since Im aimin for the PPE major - so for me its a question of either goin straight to 114 and not wasting time or goin first to 104 to pimp out my integration and then 114 :)</p>

<p>Hmmm, hard to say. I would say though that you'd probably struggle with 114 if 104 gave you trouble (just going by general correlation alone from what I've seen). I mean if 104 is stuff you're already familiar with, test out of it.</p>

<p>I think you can handle 114. I also had several gaps from the 104 syllabus, mainly all the series stuff and the 'conic sections' thing (hyperbolas, parabolas, ellipses). I felt very bad at the beginning of 114, because one of the last 'vector' topics deals with knowing how certain equations look in 3D, and for some of them you needed to be able to spot 'oh, this looks like a hyperbola', so I thought 'crap, I'm screwed', but it turned out in the end that this wasn't really a very important topic; I think it didn't even appeared on the final. Everything after that was fine for me, except at the end, when series are used to solve differential equations, I also thought I was screwed, but you can easily manage even if you don't know Taylor series/polynomials and all that stuff. You don't really need to know it, reading the required section from the book tells you how to do it (and by this I mean only the required section, not any previous section that you were supposed to read in 104). So my recommendation is that you take 114 if you feel confident, but always take into account those 'gaps' you mention. For instance, I still have the series and conic sections gap, but probably a little reading should solve that. If it's useful, I took IB Mathematics HL and got a 7.</p>

<p>if you have some calculus experience and can do basic diff/integration, 114 should be okay. I did place out of 104, but I also thought that we didn't rely too heavily on concepts from 104 too much (I couldn't do a lot of the integration that my roommate had to do actually because I had forgotten how to do it all =X). You'll always review previous material that you need to know anyway, and if there's always study on your own time.</p>

<p>I wonder if it is possible to test out of 114 and receive credit. Does 240 need a lot of 114 stuff?</p>

<p>you can test out.. i'm trying to test out of 241. I would honestly not recommend you try to skip 114 though unless you know/really are committed to learning the material, because I think that is the most important semester so far in calc. You learn how to handle multi-var calculus, and get exposure to differential equations as well. You also learn how to do spherical/parametric representations of multi-var integrals and differentials too. You'll have a really tough time in 240 if you don't understand the 114 material</p>

<p>Thankx a lot for the advice</p>

<p>do all your schools give you the opportunity to take calc 2 your senior year...essentially the stuff from BC that you don't learn in AB..the second semester..in other words something about equal to 114 i believe...i would think that if youve taken BC you'd be able to handle 114...no?</p>

<p>AB = 103</p>

<p>BC = 104 (lotsa integrals, series, rotation, etc)</p>

<p>114 = multivar calc</p>

<p>ya i have no idea whether or not to take Math 104 or 114 (I'm assuming I didn't place out of 104 with my AP test)</p>

<p>how would someone know if they're good at math or they just think they are haha</p>

<p>hey,
I just wanted to know if anybody here has taken the math 114 placement exam, and if so, did it include any of the math 104 portion?</p>

<p>hey you can find semester exams for both 114 and 104 on the upenn math website. and from what i saw, the exam papers for 114 and 104 were pretty distinct..</p>