<p>I'm a high school senior. I'm going to finish Calculus 2 this semester at my local community college. I'm going to take Multi Variable Calculus next semester, but am also wondering if I should take Linear Algebra as well. I want to major in math and plan on attending a UC. Even if i take these two courses, I want to the honors version of multi-calc and lin. algebra at the UC. Should i take both of just multi variable calculus?</p>
<p>What do you <em>want</em> to do in your last semester of high school? If you are going to re-take both classes anyway, there’s no pressure to take them now. </p>
<p>Linear algebra is in many ways more fundamental than multivariable calculus - in particular, a rigorous development of multivariable calculus relies on a solid linear algebra foundation. (You won’t get this rigor at the community college, but you might see it in the honors versions at the UC.) Even if your multivariable calculus class won’t require linear algebra, you might get much more out of the class if you had already seen it. From this point of view, you might consider taking linear algebra now and postponing multivariable calculus until later. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the gap between computational and rigorous linear algebra is much smaller than the gap between computational and rigorous multivariable calculus. I was introduced to both fields in a rigorous proof-based fashion. While I could follow along in linear algebra, multivariable calculus did not make sense until I went back and worked through many computational examples, the sorts of problems that you might see in your community college class. From this point of view, taking multivariable calculus now might lesson the mathematical culture shock that you might experience at the UC.</p>
<p>Be careful about taking Linear Algebra in community college. Although most schools offer Linear Algebra at the sophomore level, there are some that offer it at junior level which would not count for credit if taken at a community college.</p>
<p>multivariate calc is more interesting in my opinion. </p>
<p>i didn’t think linear algebra was very interesting until we recently started revisiting some stuff about vector spaces and other things in abstract algebra. it is purely theoretical stuff, but really interesting. we just never learned any of it in linear algebra.</p>