What math courses are most important?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>I am a junior in high school who is taking classes at my local community college. After the end of this school year, I will have taken calculus I, II, and III and I am confused about what I should take next year. I am interested in pursuing a degree in either computer science or finance/economics (not sure which yet). My options include:</p>

<p>Calculus IV
Discrete Math
Linear Algebra
Descriptive Statistics
Inferential Statistics
Differential Equations</p>

<p>Which 3 courses will I most likely need to take when I am pursuing a degree in either of the fields that I am interested in?</p>

<p>Thanks in advance for your help!</p>

2

<p>Calculus IV, Discrete Mathematics, and Linear Algebra for Computer Science </p>

3

<p>What exactly is calculus IV? Real analysis?</p>

4

<p>Calculus IV is an extension of multi-variable calculus. So statistics is not as important? </p>

5

<p>@Hosley17‌ Not for Computer Science. </p>

6

<p>Ok thank you @Kawaiiii‌.</p>

7

<p>What???
Statistics has [url=&lt;a href=“http://www.amstat.org/careers/computerscience.cfm]many[/url”&gt;http://www.amstat.org/careers/computerscience.cfm]many[/url</a>], [url=&lt;a href=“http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2039904/what-statistics-should-a-programmer-or-computer-scientist-know]many[/url”&gt;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2039904/what-statistics-should-a-programmer-or-computer-scientist-know]many[/url</a>] different applications to computer science. </p>

<p>In contrast, you most likely won’t even touch vector calculus (which I presume is what is meant by “Calculus IV”) unless you go into specialized subjects where it is used (and in those cases it will be essential). Even if you take introductory E&M you won’t need any specific knowledge from that class (for example, you’ll see line integrals, but you’ll be told to pretend they are normal integrals and you’ll only be given special cases where this is true) unless you go to a super elite university.</p>

8

<p>Discrete Math, Statistics, Differential Equations are definitely very important - for example, the Black-Scholes model, used in economics, makes extensive use of the latter two. However, you will probably end up having to take all of these courses at some point in time, so it shouldn’t matter at this stage.</p>

9

<p>Thanks for your input @pamstud‌!</p>

10

You’re sadly mistaken. The basis of artificial intelligence is probability theory in functional analysis. If you’re going to study computer science, statistics may be the most important area of math to study behind linear algebra.

For the op, calc 3 in computational. It’s calculus like you did, just in 3 (or n) variables. You do things like f(x,y) = x + y

I don’t think you quite understand what analysis is

11

Calculus, differential, and all the statistics for economics.

12

Diff eq and la are a must.

13

Do you know which courses will transfer to the college(s) you’re interested in?

14

Take Calc IV/DiffEq…you may or may not be able to skip those classes in college, but Stats/Discrete classes likely are far more difficult at a highly-ranked university than a community college class, whereas the difficulty differential is probably smaller in Calc IV/DiffEq.

15

@halcyonheather‌ Unfortunately it depends on where I go to college. For arguments sake, let’s assume any class will transfer.

16

For Finance/Economics I would suggest Equations, In. Stats, and Linear Algebra.

17

If you take Calculus III, you’ll probably need to also take Calculus IV because most colleges teach multivariable calculus in a single class.

Are these calculus-based statistics classes?