<p>As a mechanical engineering major, I know I will probably take 4-5 courses but was wondering if I could take elective (non-major) courses on top of that.
I would like to study a foreign language for all four years, would it be possible for me to do this?</p>
<p>Also, if I choose the 5 year B.S.+M.S. in engineering will that give me even less flexibility in courses?</p>
<p>yup. doing anything on top of engineering is extremely difficult. having said that, don't get discouraged. i know a sophomore at usc who has a double major in mechanical engineering and political science. she's also a genious. she was accepted to mit, harvard, princeton, and stanford, but chose usc because of the trustee scholarship.</p>
<p>oh and i'm a mechanical engineer, too. look forward to taking some classes with you next year!</p>
<p>Sure it's entirely possible. Last semester I took a course which didn't count at all towards my major (I'm in engineering)</p>
<p>They let you take up to 24 units on Pass/No Pass basis, meaning it doesn't affect your GPA at all even if you don't pass, and you get P if you end up with C- or above. This is quite generous until you realize that P/NP courses just literally can't apply to your major or minor courses (except maybe sometimes foreign language and one GE course, see your advisor)</p>
<p>Doing a minor+engineering is hard but entirely manageable and lots of people do. Doing double major+engineering is really, really hard but still possible - things that make it easier are coming in with a lot of AP units, waiving out of freshman courses like Calc I/II (using calc BC), chemistry, etc., and also taking heavier loads or summer courses as well.</p>
<p>Surprisingly the 5 year BS/MS won't give you a lot less flexibility - you may have to take certain MechE courses as prereqs, so you may have less flexibility choosing your technical electives, but if you've made room in 4 years for free electives outside engineering that shouldn't be too limited by the BS/MS program.</p>
<p>Thank You.
One more question:
If you don't have AP credits, then you will have to take the freshman courses right (like chem, calc I etc)?
Wouldn't this be advantageous to you since it will be easier to pull off a higher GPA, and that is what ultimately grad school cares about?</p>
<p>I didn't sign up to take any APs, partially cuz it would cost me about $300, and partially cuz of my mentality above^</p>
<p>how much credit would you consider alot? i'll get credit for bio, euro, english lang, calc I (it's a college course, not ap), and i'm assuming i'll get a 4/5 in english lit and government this year. i'm debating retaking calc I next year so that i get an easy A and so i can slack off for the rest of this year, but i've heard that calc I at usc is insanely difficult. should i buckle down and take calc II next year?</p>
<p>Lol, wouldn't Calc II at USC be even more difficult than Calc I?</p>
<p>honestly how hard can calc 1 be? lol
especially if youve taken it before</p>
<p>wait.. we get credit for collegelevel courses?
I'm taking Linear Alg & Diff Equations in my HS and I took Single Variable Calc last year
both of which are college level (AP+ they call it in my school)
will i get credit for that?</p>
<p>This question comes up a lot - waive calc I or II and go into the next course, or repeat for easy A.</p>
<p>Well the first thing to consider is that it may not be quite as easy as you think to get an A - kinda depends on how good your previous course was, your level of comfort with the material, and how much work you'll put in.</p>
<p>Whether your "college" course counts depends on the exact circumstances. Usually if the course is taught on a college campus alongside CC students it counts. If it's taught on the HS campus with only HS students...varys. ("AP+" kind of sounds suspicious, I would check to see if they transfer or not)</p>
<p>Calc I may be easier to convince them to count/waive because you've got to take calc II and III anyways, so even if your calc I course wasn't up to snuff, they're not letting you "get away" with anything really - you still have to learn it all anyways.</p>
<p>Linear algebra might be a bit tougher because it's not just bumping you up a level in math, they're waiving a requirement. Still, it's entirely possible. Contact the Articulation office to see if it transfers.</p>
<p>i tested out of Calc I with the AB test...for much of my first semester, i debated whether or not this was the wisest decision, as you'll see later. i also passed out of the Chem requirement with Chem AP...which unless you're a ChemE, i highly recommend. man, that made my freshman year quite a bit easier, heh.</p>
<p>from the many friends i had in calc I at USC, it's mostly hard because of the MATLAB projects. last semester they had 5 full-on MATLAB projects that would each take an enormous amount of time and thought, especially if you've never done any sort of programming, much less MATLAB. but because of complaints, the number of projects was reduced to two this semester, and may stay that way...from what i've heard, calc I isn't nearly as bad this semester.</p>
<p>calc II can be hard depending on your professor. that and the general consensus amongst professors and upperclassmen engineers was that calc II was one of the hardest math classes any engineer will take. the material is demanding and requires much more hard thinking than just hard work, IMO. my professor expected A LOT from us...time, a strong foundation in calc I, and especially a passion for math (that or a fear of an undesired grade :p). the class was grueling, but by the end i had a much greater respect and understanding for math...as well as pulling an A...the most rewarding A i'd ever earned...but i still think that was easily the least fun class i had ever taken as well haha.</p>
<p>MATLAB is the devil.... I took AP Calc in high school, and got a 5 (highest score) on the AP Calc AB test, but I decided to take Calc I at USC anyway, since I knew I would be busy in the fall with the band during football season, and thought it would be easy review stuff. WRONG! It was still a struggle. I know several people who got 5's on the AP Calc test and still ended up dropping this class because it was too damn hard. And MATLAB will seriously test your sanity. So unless you are a certified math genius, think very carefully about skipping Calc I. I don't know of anyone who thought Calc I was an easy A. The people who skipped Calc I seemed to do OK in Calc II, but I gotta believe that my struggles through Calc I have better prepared me for the adventures of upper level math at USC. I ended up with a B+ in Calc I -- my lowest grade, hardest class my first semester. I thought I was pretty damn good in math, but that was before I met MATLAB....</p>
<p>can we contact the Articulation office before enrolling, to inquire the credit transfer situation</p>
<p>For what it's worth, the vast majority of people in Calc I (90+ %, no exaggeration) have taken some Calculus before. By no means is it an easy A.</p>
<p>**** Matlab. I'll post an example of just one of the projects (we had 5 over the course of the semester on top of the homework, quizzes, midterms, etc.)</p>
<p>Safe and Secure Inc. is a company that specializes in electronic security systems. You are part of their
research and development team and are developing a product that identifies people based on the stromal
pattern of the iris in their eye and permits or denies access based upon this identification.
The stromal pattern in the iris is determined randomly during embryonic gestation and is unique to each
individual; even identical twins have different iris patterns. In addition, it changes very little as we age. This
makes it attractive for biometric identification. Indeed, iris recognition systems have been used for passport
free immigration at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands and in the United Arab Emirates since 2001.
Commercially available iris recognition systems work, essentially, as follows. Digital photographs of the
irises of the individuals to be identified are carefully centered and scaled and stored in a database. When
a person needs to be identified, a photograph of their iris is taken and it is compared with those in the
database. If a match is found, the person is positively identified. The algorithms used to encode and
compare the images of irises are very sophisticated and this makes these systems quite costly. Safe and
Secure Inc. has developed a device in which only partial information about the iris images is stored. This
means that the algorithm used to compare two images can be much more primitive. If it works, the hope
is that it would be cheaper but still viable for, say, small companies that have areas to which they need to
restrict access to only a handful of people.
The device Safe and Secure Inc. has developed works as follows. A person looks through a peephole. This
locates their eye precisely and controls the ambient light reaching their eye which in turn controls the size
of the pupil. The device takes a digital photograph of their iris using a 500 by 500 grid and calculates the
integral of the intensity function through 10 different lines through the image producing a vector of length
10. The lines are shown in the picture below.
column, c
row, r
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
More specifically, the lines are:
1. r = 125 (from c = 1 to c = 500),
2. r = 250 (from c = 1 to c = 500),
3. r = 375 (from c = 1 to c = 500),
4. c = 125 (from r = 1 to r = 500),
5. c = 250 (from r = 1 to r = 500),
6, c = 375 (from r = 1 to r = 500),
7. The sub-diagonal stretching from r = 250 and c = 1 to r = 1 and c = 250,
8. The sub-diagonal stretching from r = 1 and c = 251 to r = 250 and c = 500,
9. The sub-diagonal stretching from r = 251 and c = 1 to r = 500 and c = 250,
10. The sub-diagonal stretching from r = 500 and c = 251 to r = 251 and c = 500.
Only the values of these 10 integrals and not the whole image are stored. People that are to be allowed
access to the company’s restricted area will look into the device and the corresponding vector of length 10
will be stored in a database. When a person wants to gain access to the restricted area they will be required
to look into the device. The device will calculate the corresponding vector of length 10 and compare it with
those in the database. If a match is found the person will be admitted, otherwise they will be denied entry.
Whether or not this system will work depends on how two different vectors of length 10 are to be compared.
In particular, when the same person looks into the device on two different occasions the corresponding vectors
1
that are obtained will be close but not exactly the same. So the question is, what does it mean for two
vectors to be close to each other and how close do they need to be in order to conclude that they are coming
from the same person?
Your job is to determine if this system could work and, if so, how the distance between two vectors should
be measured and how close two vectors need to be in order to conclude that they come from the same person.
To do this you have been provided with the following:
• The vectors associated with six different people (the control set). Each person looked into the device
three times so you have three vectors for each person. The vectors are called ind1a, ind1b, ind1c,
ind2a, ind2b, ind2c, ...ind6a, ind6b, ind6c. The vector ind1a is the vector obtained from
the first image of the first individual, ind1b is the vector obtained from the second image of the first
individual etc.
• The digital image of the iris of the first person in the control set that produced the vector ind1a.
This is a 500 by 500 matrix called iris1a.
• The images of seven people (the test set) some of whom may be in the control set and some of whom
may not. These are 500 by 500 matrices called iris1, iris2, ...iris7 .
The vectors and images can be downloaded from blackboard. They are in the file called irisdata*.mat
where * is either 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 depending on which class you are in. Be sure to use the correct file. If you
use the wrong file you may get no credit for this assignment. If you would like to actually see the images of
the eyes corresponding to the matrices iris1a, iris1, iris2, . . . iris7, then use the m-file script lookat
that can also be downloaded from blackboard.
What you need to do:
To determine if the system could work and, if so, how the distance between two vectors should be measured
you should do the following:
a) Explore at least two different ways of measuring the distance between vectors. For each way you
should determine how close two vectors should be in order to conclude that they come from the same
person and you should write a function m-file whose input is a vector and whose output is 1 if that
vector corresponds to someone in the control set and 0 otherwise.
b) Write a function m-file whose input is a 500 by 500 image and whose output is the corresponding
vector of length 10. You can test your m-file on irisdata1a since the corresponding vector is ind1a.
c) Use your m-file in part b) to find the vector corresponding to each image iris1, ...iris7. Then,
for each method you explored in a), determine which of these seven people belong to the control set
and which do not. See if you get the same results with each method.
What you need to turn in for the assignment:
Write up your findings as a report to the project director. The report should be typed and should include
the following:
1. An introduction explaining the issue being addressed.
2. A description of at least two different methods that could be used to measure the distance between
two vectors. In each case show how you determined how close two vectors need to be in order
to conclude that they come from the same person. Show all the work you did to determine this
including any Matlab code you used.
3. Show the m-files you wrote (one for each method) to determine if a given vector belongs to someone
in the control set or not.
4. Show the m-file you wrote that takes an image and finds the corresponding vector of length 10
associated with it.
5. Show the vectors associated with the seven people in the test set and for each method your conclusion
as to whether or not each person was in the control set.
6. A conclusion as to whether or not the system could work.
Attach the cover sheet posted on blackboard to the front of your report. For students in those classes that
meet in the mathematics instructional computer lab on Tuesdays, the report is due on Tuesday Nov 14 in
discussion sections. For all other students the report is due on Thursday Nov 16 in discussion sections.
Disclaimer: The iris images in this project were computer generated and are not real images.</p>
<p>Sounds fun! :D</p>
<p>yea right, so again where do i go to have it waived :d</p>
<p>so i'm a little confused. are you saying that we should or should not pass out of calc I?</p>
<p>
[quote]
yea right, so again where do i go to have it waived :d
[/quote]
talk to articulation...they're usually the ones who transfer units. they can transfer units, but until you talk to your department/school advisor, you can't usually waive requirements and get into higher classes...your units will only count as electives.</p>
<p>if you're talking about AP credit, then all you have to do is put down the right college when you're filling out the AP sheet. you may also have to fill out pre-orientation stuff in the meantime during the summer, but mostly for informational purposes at your advisement session. then at your orientation advisement session, the advisers should be aware of your AP credits and let you pass out of requirements.</p>
<p>as for testing out of calc I...it might be worthwhile, especially if:1) you got a 5 and on top of that feel VERY comfortable with the material, and 2) you get a good professor in calc II, of which there are several. because from what i heard, getting an A in calc I isn't too much easier than getting in an A calc II because of MATLAB. granted, my professor made us do a computer project, which was a headache...but he was the only one that required it as he was more demanding (almost beyond reason) than all the other calc II professors.</p>
<p>Agree with Phobos. You have to know your own math powers, and decide from there. Engineering majors - weren't we all math geniuses in high school? Just be aware that this does not necessarily transfer to USC math...</p>
<p>There is no one right answer. And if you make the wrong choice, drop the class or seek out some tutoring help or take it in the summer somewhere and transfer credits.</p>
<p>And a lot does depend on your professor and TA, too.</p>
<p>MATLAB will suck the life force from your body.... But now that the math department has decreased the number of required MATLAB projects, more people will survive USC Calc I and II, and there will be fewer casualties. </p>
<p>What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, eh? That's my philosophy re: USC math.</p>
<p>sfgiants - ha ha - many times last semester I also thought to myself "**** MATLAB!" I couldn't agree more... I will never forget that girl crying in my section during the Calc I midterm....</p>
<p>If you are a senior and taking AP Calc in high school right now, you will not know your AP test score before registration anyway, so just sign up for Calc I. And if you get a 5, then you can change classes online later, if you really want to. </p>
<p>But all I gotta say is that a score of 5 in AP Calc does not automatically mean you should skip Calc I. </p>
<p>In my case, I am really glad that I took Calc I despite a 5 on the AP test. I feel better prepared this semester for Calc II (which is still a ball buster class I might add).</p>
<p>By the way, MATLAB is a math software system with its own programming language, designed for solving systems of linear equations, factoring matrices, computing vectors - and all sorts of other masochistic fun.</p>
<p>It stands for MATrix LABoratory.</p>