Can someone please tell me (preferably by a person who has taken Honors Analysis at UChicago) what topics are taught in 20700, 20800 and 20900 respectively. Like, I know the overall syllabus, but not course specific. Also, how difficult is it to get an A grade in Honors Analysis? How many people get an A? How many of those are freshmen? Also, what are current books that are being used as texts for this course? (Rudin?)
It depends who is teaching, but they cover grad-level Analysis topics that interest the professor. Rudin is covered, but done by the end of winter quarter.
@astrofan Somewhere in the depths of the CC University of Chicago forum there are a ton of posts by a poster named @phuriku (and many fewer by @mathgrad ) talking about Honors Analysis in great detail, sometimes with links to problem sets. Both of them took the course, in different years. Here’s a taste: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/774370-honors-calculus-vs-intro-to-lin-alg.html. But that hardly exhausts the genre. There are also some posts by @CountingDown explaining why her son, who was offered admission to the course, turned it down in favor of an Inquiry-Based Learning section of regular Analysis. And there are any number of d***-measuring contests between Chicago people and Harvard people over which ridiculous over-the-top math course is more ridiculous and over-the-top, Chicago’s Math 207-209 or Harvard’s Math 55.
The problem is that there really isn’t a set curriculum. As you can see in the thread linked above, @mathgrad says that he or she learned everything but Analysis in Honors Analysis.
At least as of about 8 years ago, the course tended to be about half first-years who placed into it and half second-years who became eligible to take it by getting all As in 160s Honors Calculus. My impression – largely formed by talking to one of my kid’s housemates, who was in the latter group, is that the 10-12 first-years who place into the course tend to be (or at least many of them are) incredible math whizzes (and the ones who aren’t may drop the course), and the second-years struggle to keep up (although some succeed). My informant got Bs and Cs in the course, and was miserable most of the year. He was very proud of himself for taking it and, in retrospect, glad he had. He’s a math PhD now.
I don’t think there’s any set curve for the course. A lot of people who take it get As, because they’re that good, especially if they spend the 30-35 hours/week it seems to require.
Google UChicago Reddit Honors Analysis and there are more students relating their first hand experience.
Word of caution: while almost every student wrote that they were glad they took the sequence, they all stated that Math 207-208-209 would not be necessary condition to be a successful math major here. And the last thing you should do is to take the class just because this is an Honors sequence. Unless you are a Terence Tao level of math genius, you likely are going to spend 35 to 40 hours per week on P-set. Ask yourself whether you have the dedication and commitment to take this sequence.
Some universities with great math departments offer stunt courses like this; others make a pedagogical decision that it’s not a good idea. It’s not for everyone, not even for all dedicated and skilled math students.
Entering college, it’s a good idea to get yourself out of a common high school mindset: You are not going to be applying to college again. You don’t need to prove yourself by taking every one of the hardest courses available just to show you are the best.
Do it (or not) for yourself, not for how you think others will view it.
If doing that helps you become the best mathematician you can be, then it’s great. If it doesn’t, it’s useless. If you wind up applying to math graduate school, your actual skill level and accomplishments will matter a lot more than if you took Honors Analysis, even though in the math world people will understand what taking Honors Analysis meant. And if – as is most likely the case – you don’t apply to PhD programs in math, no one but you will ever really care that you took the course.
Each major has different math requirements?
^ the math sequence that the student takes as freshman conditions the majors he/she can do later?
If so, what happens if the student does not know which major he wants to do?
Majors have more or less rigorous math requirements, but each major has multiple paths for satisfying their math requirements. No math placement will shut a student out of any major.
In effect, the Core requires that everyone take (or place out of) the first two quarters of calculus, but it can be any of three (really four) different versions of it: 130s, 150s, or 160s (regular or IBL). People who place into the remedial pre-calc course have to complete that and then take the calculus. (Actually, the Core can be satisfied without taking calculus, by computer science and/or statistics courses, but at least in the past you had to waterboard the advisers to get them to admit that.)
The third quarter of calculus is a requirement for most STEM and some social science majors. Again, that quarter can be taken in any of the sequences (and, except in 160s, someone who places out of the first two quarters of a sequence can start with the third). Some majors require people who didn’t complete Honors Calculus 163 (or higher), but completed 133 or 153, to take a catch-up one-quarter course in proof-based mathematics, because either 163 or that course is a pre-requisite for most higher-level math courses. I think a student who takes 130s calculus then wants to major in something math-heavy like math, physics, economics is going to have to work hard at some point to catch up, but there’s a clear path to do that.
At the other end of the spectrum, to get into the conversation about Honors Analysis, a student has to be completely comfortable (and sophisticated) with proof-based math at the 163 level at least, and probably has taken a few university-level post-calculus courses.
@JHS Thanks!
“(Actually, the Core can be satisfied without taking calculus, by computer science and/or statistics courses, but at least in the past you had to waterboard the advisers to get them to admit that.)”
One need not waterboard the advisor anymore, as non-calculus options are now definitely offered to all.
http://collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/thecollege/mathematicalsciencescore/
@JBStillFlying : You’ve been on College Confidential for over a year, now, and you still think 18-year-olds ever read the course catalog? A few do, but most don’t, and even some that do don’t know how to use it to figure out things like requirements. That’s a skill people tend to pick up in college, not high school.
@JHS - ha. It’s still good to have high expectations. And also, there is a wealth of information in that catalog.
My kid took the honors IBL series the first year and the 3rd quarter there were only 2 As in a class of maybe 30. The rest of the class half got Bs and half got Cs. It was pretty brutal because they all probably would have gotten As in the next level down. 40+ hours a week for the pset was standard. It also got more difficult each quarter to keep up with grades because as people dropped each quarter to a lower level the curve gets harder and harder. If after you get more specific info you decide to take it don’t feel like you have to tough it out if it is totally making you miserable. They did let people switch to a different class even during the quarter as it is very hard to tell the proper placement until you get into the course a bit.
My math major son (SB 2012) who took IBL instead of Honors Analysis is the one JHS mentioned above. He had MV, Complex Analysis, Lin Alg, Diff Eq, & Discrete in HS and a summer at HCSSiM doing lots of proofs. The prof who ran Honors Analysis at the time told S he could choose to remain in that class, but said that the IBL class could really use him. IBL is much more student-led, in that the class derives proofs and figures things out for themselves. It’s a very different methodology, and a lot of students struggle with it. Because of his experience at HCSSiM, he had the tools to do well with both the methodology and the math. He got 2 As and a B. S said IBL covered pretty much everything HA did, but with a different approach.
For his honors math sequence, he took Abstract Algebra. He’s a theoretical computer science guy, so he looked at the math major as a way to get more tools in his belt for the CS parts of his life. After two summers working in a niche area of a SV company and two summers doing research with a prof at MIT, he concluded that he’d learn more on the industry side than in academia. (He had originally planned to get a PhD in CS.) He now does language development, algorithm optimization and other things that are far over my head. He’s more infrastructure and big-picture than product-driven.
Many people get 5s in Calc BC and decide they’re prepared to take the 160s sequence. They get their tails kicked because it’s much tougher than they expected, and the quarter system means you are covering lots of material very quickly. Happily, the powers that be are flexible about changing levels midstream. Don’t take Honors Analysis unless you have done a lot of proof work. Many math majors take the 160s in freshman year and then do fine in Hon Analysis the next year.