Jacen123 Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 I can't believe it's already almost spring break. It feels like the semester has barely started. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ms. Spam Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 I'm at the midway mark. I'm in the middle of mine now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeygirl Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 I can't believe we only have 2 more Girl Trip days left. On the other hand, I miss Jesus and Roy something awful and I can't wait to hear music made in this millennium again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerina Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 Icy and I have decided to crash the girl trip next year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 YAY BABY #2!!!!!!  Why on earth would you want a second kidBecause my kid is cooler than you, so obv I need 2. Yeah, that does not sound like a job that's conducive to keeping your sanity with another little one at home. Congrats on the pregnancy though!Yeah, right now I get to see my son for about an hour each day. Not worth it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destiny Skywalker Posted March 14, 2015 Share Posted March 14, 2015 Congratulations on baby 2, but sorry to hear about the job. I'm hearing similar nonsense about being "competitive for the future" at work, too, which is really just code for "we don't care about your personal life, and we'd prefer you just not have one in the first place". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoLA Posted March 14, 2015 Share Posted March 14, 2015 I am surprised and delighted to see this forum referencing Munden's bar! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryn Posted March 14, 2015 Share Posted March 14, 2015 I think there's a few First loyalists around here. (Just last night, I distracted myself at work imagining an anthology show, not unlike Twilight Zone, with the bar as an episode's intro and outro.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destiny Skywalker Posted March 16, 2015 Share Posted March 16, 2015 The 2 guys at work that usually watch my back have screwed me over hard the last few days. On Friday, I found they left me off a patent application, and then today one of them called in sick and threw me a huge task that is due today, with the job sloppily done. I have to leave by 4 to take my kid to physical therapy. One of them did apologize for leaving me off, especially because I saw their patent idea being discussed and I was like, hey, you better to go this meeting to tell them you have an idea! And they were like, oh, it's already in process... oops, sorry, we left you off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3 & 6 years to go... Posted March 16, 2015 Author Share Posted March 16, 2015 Holy cow. Nightly opens on my work computer again. Yay! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerina Posted March 16, 2015 Share Posted March 16, 2015 The 2 guys at work that usually watch my back have screwed me over hard the last few days. On Friday, I found they left me off a patent application, and then today one of them called in sick and threw me a huge task that is due today, with the job sloppily done. I have to leave by 4 to take my kid to physical therapy. One of them did apologize for leaving me off, especially because I saw their patent idea being discussed and I was like, hey, you better to go this meeting to tell them you have an idea! And they were like, oh, it's already in process... oops, sorry, we left you off.oh fuck that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoLA Posted March 16, 2015 Share Posted March 16, 2015 I think there's a few First loyalists around here.(Just last night, I distracted myself at work imagining an anthology show, not unlike Twilight Zone, with the bar as an episode's intro and outro.)I hope you imagined a Grimjak cameo! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerina Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 Good news! Apparently now people at Trevor's job are jumping ship or getting fired for fighting in the parking lot or going to jail (how did this place ever stay in business?!?)! So now he gets to work an extra hour each day which brings us out of the "danger zone" and it doesn't look like I'll have to get a job! Yay! Even better news - we're "done" with integrals and have moved on to differential equations and infinite series! But now my macroecon class has started. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacen123 Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 Fantastic! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerina Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 What subject do you teach? Can you explain why integrals are so much more painful than anything else ever? (Except maybe limits, but I think they're painful in a different way.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destiny Skywalker Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 Infinite series are the worst thing ever. God, I hated Calc 2. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerina Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 Calc 2 is how they weed out the weak. Â That's what I'm going to keep telling myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacen123 Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 What subject do you teach?  I teach various statistics courses (lower level, upper level, and graduate). Fortunately, we've got plenty of mathematicians to cover all of the math courses that I think I'd have much more trouble with teaching. I believe the reason calculating integrals are more difficult (or more painful) is due to the fact that working with them isn't just using ideas from calculus (like anti-derivatives), but also combining those ideas with some notion of pattern recognition. This is especially true for the types of integrals you find in calculus 2. That course is all about various methods of solving integrals of complicated functions. Knowing which approach to use requires us to understand each one of the methods very so that we know what types of forms to look for. This is also in sharp contrast to finding derivatives, where, if the function is differentiable, once you know the basic rules about derivatives of classes of functions (polynomials, trig functions, exponentials, logarithms, etc.) along with the power rule and chain rule, you have all of the tools needed to take derivatives. Doing so correctly might take patience and careful work, but if you start with a differentiable function, you can arrive at a solution. This, again, is in contrast to integrals, which, even if the function is integrable, might not have a closed form solution (such as functions of the form exp(-x^2) ). Certain aspects of infinite series are similar to integrals. It sounds like you're just starting with those, but one of the big problems is knowing whether the series converges and, if so, what value does it converge to. Those problems are all about pattern recognition and making comparisons to other series that you know the answers for. I have more to say, but I've got a meeting to go to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacen123 Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 When I first learned infinite series, I had trouble with them partly because of the pattern recognition aspects of the problem, but also because it wasn't really clear why we were studying them. The why for everything prior to them in Calculus 2 at least made sense to me, but these did not. Now, I use them somewhat frequently when teaching upper level or graduate courses because they appear frequently in calculations of expected values of discrete random variables. Taylor series also pop up from time to time in derivations of various results. Of course, that's just my experience. Anyway, the integrals in Calc 2 are supposed to be difficult or at least complicated. I don't know how the course is taught where you are (or even here, for that matter), but to me, the mos important aspect of the course to me is to understand the various strategies for solving complicated integrals. That isn't to say that the details aren't important because you will likely encounter some of the complicated functions again in the future, but in practice, if you at least remember the main techniques, you will have ideas of how to solve those problems in the future when you can look up the details. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerina Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 My biggest problem this semester has been the online format of this class. In every other math class I've ever had, I've always received at least partial credit for setting up the problem correctly and following the correct steps to solve. So if you made a small calculation error somewhere in the middle (dropped a negative, misread a 4 as a y, etc.) then at least the entire problem isn't counted wrong. But online, where you enter in your final answer to the computer's software, if it doesn't match completely then you lose credit for the entire problem. Thankfully, my professor seems to be changing things. The last test on differential equations was a "take-home" that we had to scan and email back to him, and the one before that we had to take at a proctored testing center on campus so they could scan and send him our scratch sheets (I actually got almost 20 points back on that one.) I foresee the rest of the semester going much better. Â So my main concern has always been "do I know the concepts well enough to set up the problem correctly and recognize when I've gotten an answer that is completely off base". For something like integrals, I'm fairly confident that I'll almost always have access to technology that will do the dirty work for me. Especially for something like integrals. I highly doubt I'll need to calculate them while in the middle of the woods or at the grocery store. So like you said, if I can get the basics down, the details will be taken care of. But seriously! To do half a page of work only to lose all credit because you missed a damn negative... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacen123 Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 I completely understand the pain of not getting credit for incorrect answers on online systems. That is the biggest flaw with them to me. I use online homework for lower level classes, but I give students a few attempts before they lose any points in case of formatting or problems like what you mentioned. I couldn't imagine using that system for exams, though. For me, work is where most of the credit comes from. If someone messes up a part of the problem (like a negative sign) early on, but does the rest of the problem in the right way, I typically give them most of the credit....unless, of course, that part of the problem they messed up was a huge component of the problem and messing it up completely changed the problem. I'm glad that your exams have started veering in the direction of regular exams where your work can be counted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerina Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 We get tons of homework chances. My homework average is really high. Quizzes and tests though? Ugh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkeygirl Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 When your table turns into a cow, you really just have to go with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burt Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 All this math talk makes me grateful for R. I have my little cookbook notes and I just plug and click. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacen123 Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 I used R a lot my first year of grad school, but I switched over to do a vast majority of my work in Matlab after that because I find it more user friendly for writing code than R. If I need to do more classical model fitting, I prefer R, though. I am also a big fan of RStudio from what little I've seen of it. It addresses a number of the aspects of R that I found frustrating and a few of my students have enjoyed using it for their research. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts