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Computer Science Majoring - Any Tips Appreciated!


FantasyAcquiesce

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Hello,
As a college student, I've been trying to achieve a CS major but feel a couple problems on the way. I've been studying Calculus for the past year and am now doing Calculus 3. This is the recommended requirement of Calculus for CS in my area. However, I've been feeling that Calculus has literally taken up my whole life; I literally devote myself to studying the concepts like a religion. Unfortunately, spending all my time on the subject has not been guaranteeing me high grades. I feel that life is nothing more than Calculus because of the time I have to spend trying to understand the concepts, which ends up hit or miss.

Anyone that has majored in CS, is the math portion essential? I've done better or worse in Calculus 1 and 2 (respectively an A- and B). I'm just weary after having to devote a year on the math alone. Only recently have I been able to begin a CS C++ introduction class- and I'm loving it so far!

Community college has been rather depressing because I don't have time to attend clubs and only recently found a convenient one. My concern is that I plan to go to a conference in another state of the US and I will consequently miss a couple days of school (very concerned about Calculus grade). So far, I did not do too well with Calculus 3's converging/diverging, taylor series, and maclaurin series (honestly my least favorite part of ALL of Calculus so far). If you can explain your experiences with partial derivatives, vectors (currently doing that), and multiple integrals. Does Calculus 3 get any more difficult at this point?

Thank you and please share any tips! Anything is appreciated!

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In my collegiate and professional experience, the math that is taught is not necessarily required. It highly depends on what job you'll end up taking up after getting out of college. However, the school has no control over where a person may end up. I believe that the emphasis that is put upon math, at least in the way that it is taught, does not line up with the real world even when I had gone. There is no reason why a student should need to have to memorize formulas, or have to take a test without a calculator, penalize people for ditching fractions and/or using a brand of calculator other than Texas Instruments.

Then again, you have to also remember that the math courses you are taking in college are not specific to your major. They are general purposes courses that people from multiple majors can take. Those who end up in math heavy professions will gain more from those classes than those who do not.

I can only speak for the college that I had gone to, but their CS courses did not include the digital logic courses and labs that were part of the electronics majors. While I ended up going to college for something I ended up not doing professionally, those digital logic courses helped me way more in my programming life than any of the math courses.

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1 hour ago, Tripredacus said:

... have to take a test without a calculator ...

... so that we have now a number of yutes [1] that are not capable of doing a simple subtraction, like - you know - making the change for a cash payment without using a calculator, or more generally are so arithmetically (besides and before mathematically) impaired to fail calculating mentally even orders of magnitude ... :(

jaclaz

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104952/quotes/qt0404568

 

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3 hours ago, Tripredacus said:

It highly depends on what job you'll end up taking up after getting out of college.

Not a programmer myself, but that's the quote of the day. cryptography or creating 3D engines require more maths, databases and frontend are said to require less.

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21 hours ago, jaclaz said:

... so that we have now a number of yutes [1] that are not capable of doing a simple subtraction, like - you know - making the change for a cash payment without using a calculator, or more generally are so arithmetically (besides and before mathematically) impaired to fail calculating mentally even orders of magnitude ... :(

In my experience, it was the low level courses you could use the calculator but not the high level ones. Its a bit backwards in my opinion. Then again most yuthhhs aren't taking Technical Physics anyways.

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