<p>Hi all! I'm going to be a freshman EE major next year and I'm going to be taking quite a few math classes next year as well as over my college career. I would like to know some strategies you all used to succeed in your math courses.</p>
<p>A little background on myself: I'm not "mathematically inept" -- I've always enjoyed math classes in school, I've gotten A's in all of them, I got 5's on AP Stats and AP Calc BC, 790 SAT Math, and do competition problems (AMC/AIME level) for fun. </p>
<p>However, I've heard of kids who have 5'ed Calc BC (arguably the hardest non-competition math standardized test in HS) who end up getting C's in Multivariable & linear algebra, so I'm a bit worried about how I'll end up doing! </p>
<p>So...what strategies do you guys use to do well in math classes? Should I try to do every exercise in the textbook? How should I review for exams? What should I do daily to keep my math skills and knowledge fresh?</p>
<p>Yikes, no. This will take way too much time, and past the first few problems you won’t get much out of it. </p>
<p>Paging through the textbook or posted notes, reading the definitions and following along and reproducing the results has always worked for me. I also do all of the homework without looking up the solutions once the going gets tough–struggling through a problem helps me understand it.</p>
<p>Multivariable is pretty relaxed if you excelled in Calc I and II. The only hard part is setting up the triple integral, other than that, it’s all rather intuitive. </p>
<p>Silence_kit has the right idea regarding definitions and whatnot. Try doing the examples and see if the book differs in the methodology. If it’s not working for you, try a different point of view. Paul’s Online Notes are a GREAT resource for neat reviewing. By no means it replaces your textbook, but it’s rather good. I placed in a Mu Alpha Theta competition in Multivariable using Paul’s Online Notes, without any prior experience in Multi.</p>
<p>Lastly, just work hard it. Listen to the guy teach in class, read from the book, don’t slack off.</p>
<p>I think the only reason for this is because Math in college is accelerated in comparison to HS AP Calc. Not to mention many people get into college and either go party crazy, procrastinate their studies, or a combo of the both - which is what happened to me when I got in college, after I got a 5 in AP Calc.</p>
<p>Stay a bit (or a lot) ahead in the class so that when you get hit with something unexpected (the flu, extra work from other courses, etc.) you won’t fall behind.</p>
<p>The trick in college math, physics and chemistry is</p>
<p>DO THE PROBLEMS, DONT LEARN THE MATERIAL. When I struggled through my Freshman year, both my calc 1 and physics 1 professors gave me the same advice. Do the problems, learn algorithms to solve them and memorize those algorithms, then repeat on test, hw and quizzes. </p>
<p>It worked for me. I didn’t pay attention to the material at all, but somehow with never even reading the chapters and only looking for formulas and stuff, I still ended up learning the material</p>
<p>If you can get through classes and get good grades by playing this game, my hat’s off to you. I think though that it would be easier and less stressful in the long run just to listen and actually learn what’s being taught in class.</p>
<p>While learning the material is great. Have you ever been able to take a math class and do well just by reading the book. The chances are very small that this is possible. You learn math by doing math, no other way around it.</p>
<p>Well yeah, but I think that jumping into the homeworks without the exposition/derivations in the lectures and the text is just making things unnecessarily hard. Once the concept is in place, the calculations follow easily. </p>
<p>Maybe it is just that I personally get a lot out of lectures and reading.</p>
<p>Most text books have solution manuals accompanied with them in those subjects. All you do is do the problems, if you cant you look at solution and memorize. pretty simple way to pull A’s.</p>
<p>When I took physics, there were many problems that required conceptual knowledge of the physical phenomena in order to know how to solve the problem. Maybe your physics class was more “plug 'n chug” oriented, I guess.</p>
<p>Some advice from the mother of an engineering student – think twice about jumping right into multivariable calculus and linear algebra. Rather than using your 5 on the AP to place out of college calculus, you might consider taking it again. Both my son and daughter (both of whom scored 800 on the Math II and 5 on the BC Calculus exam) told me that there was a lot of material they didn’t cover in their respective BC math classes in high school and that they would have benefited from having taken a college level basic calculus course before plunging into the more advanced math classes.</p>
<p>I went with that strategy for a while and it did not work out well at all. What do you do when the test problems don’t even remotely resemble the problems you’ve been doing (which was usually the case)?</p>
<p>Don’t try and work every problem in the book, that probably wont help. Rather, try and make sure you fully understand the material that was assigned in class and make sure you can work all of the homework problems assigned.</p>
<p>If you dont understand any of the material, make sure you get to see the teaching assistant or the professor right away. If you dont, you will fall behind.</p>
<p>Make sure that you get a goods nights sleep and listen well in class. Take notes.</p>
<p>Make sure that you have reviewed the material before class, and review it again when you get out of class.</p>
<p>If you dont take short cuts, are consistent and work well with your time, you should be okay. It was my experience that the AP exams where harder than the exams I took in college for calculus. I guess thats because the AP exams are standardized and accepted by almost all institutions in the country.</p>
<p>And stop worrying about what grades other people get. You are not them. Worry about yourself. At the end of the day, you can only do your best.</p>
<p>Read the textbook, and just practice over and over and over. Also, think of how you studied for those AP classes and try to apply them when you do advanced math. The material does go by pretty quickly and there is a lot of stuff to apply but if you constantly practice the material, ask your TA or professor or even other students in your class for help, you will get it. I took multivariable calculus after a two quarter gap and I got 5’s in Calc AB and BC and I still did fine. The main thing is don’t forget thigns from your previous math courses because they will build up and you apply certain concepts in a different manner.</p>
<p>All right. I’m just going to do all of the assigned homework (the day it’s given!), then, to make sure that I don’t forget everything for the final, I’ll give myself little “quizzes” each day: 1 or 2 problems from each previous section. This way, I’ll be caught up and constantly refreshed. </p>
<p>Then, for my final exams, I’ll look over the solutions to the problems I’ve done, do some additional problems (from the sections that say “additional problems” or something), maybe check out Schaum’s outlines for that subject, then hopefully ace my exams! :)</p>