Going to College as an Adult

  • Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and give us your nominations!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!

Asshat wormie

2023 Asshat Award Winner
<Gold Donor>
16,820
30,968
Discomfort with math is almost always entirely due to lack of a good foundations. Algebra and trig stuff mostly. I would go back and review pre calculus if I wanted to try and get good with math.

But for research and methods classes, there is no math, just math notation. What matters is concepts of the tests you are told to use. I assume you guys are covering t test, chi-square, linear regression and anova. What is the confusion when it comes to these?
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

moonarchia

The Scientific Shitlord
24,293
45,635
Nah, there are levels of abstraction that grow with each step along the way. Not everyone can keep going. I love math and numbers in general, but calc 3 was my limit. I tried Diff Eq. Made it through a few weeks, then dropped it as it was beyond me. I tried again a few years later to the same effect.
 

Asshat wormie

2023 Asshat Award Winner
<Gold Donor>
16,820
30,968
ODEs is literally the most AIDS class in math curriculum. And that is because of the way its taught, which involves learning/memorizing a few methods that work magically and without any explanation as to why or how. The sad part is, most ODEs arent solvable analytically and once it gets to PDEs (partially differential eqs) its even worse, yet you are taught/shown the small subset that is actually solvable by hand and are almost never introduced to the theory and methods of numerically solutions. Its dumb and retarded and pointless and kills a lot of peoples desires to delve more into math. Which is sad because ODEs/PDEs are the equations of reality. Entirety of physics is nothing but ODEs/PDEs (with occasional foray into algebra) and so it sucks that ODE classes are taught like ass.
 

ToeMissile

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Gold Donor>
3,272
2,145
Nah, there are levels of abstraction that grow with each step along the way. Not everyone can keep going. I love math and numbers in general, but calc 3 was my limit. I tried Diff Eq. Made it through a few weeks, then dropped it as it was beyond me. I tried again a few years later to the same effect.
Pretty much the same here except I stumbled through the whole semester to a D+. Though I definitely could have had a more solid foundation.
 

ToeMissile

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
<Gold Donor>
3,272
2,145
My wife is Korean. Undergrad in Econ did forensic accounting then switched to teaching HS math up through calc 1.

Down side is she isn’t the best driver, by her own accord :D

Back to the original topic - I’m a pretty firm believer that pretty much anyone can learn/do anything. You might not be the best or enjoy it or whatever, but some level of understanding/proficiency is attainable. Don’t sell yourself short.
 

Sanrith Descartes

You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
<Gold Donor>
45,119
122,761
My wife is Korean. she isn’t the best driver
Season 9 What GIF by The Office
 

Tarrant

<Prior Amod>
15,896
9,295
So, I was in a zoom class this morning and the professor started having chest pains and was light-headed and we ended up having to call 911 for him. There were a few students in the actual classroom with him too, but some of us stayed on zoom and talked with him till a cop and paramedics arrived. Was some crazy stuff.
 

Slaanesh69

Millie's Staff Member
6,137
18,079
True story - my girlfriend coming out of uni was a math/chemical engineering dual major. She was fit, good-looking, smart, and, on top of everything else, a classically-trained singer who competed throughout her life.

Eventually she bored of me and moved to California and then Washington State, so all in all I figure I dodged a bullet, but she was definitely a unicorn.

Also, I was brilliant in math in my early life - I made a 100% in my first uni-level differential equations class. I taught myself how to solve (edit) integrals while writing my first year calculus exam because I had 5 exams in 3 days and I didn't have enough time to prepare completely. I was one of only 2 people to pass the first midterm in our advanced Fluid Dynamics course when we started with the simulations of pin hole leaks and v-shaped weirs.

And if you held a gun to my head right now and told me to solve the simplest of equations, I would just tell you to pull the trigger. So much gets lost over time and without practice.

When I was younger I had nearly eidetic recall, but in my dotage I have lost a lot of that skill. I think the brain gets far less flexible and agile as you age, and going back to uni would be brutal, not even mentioning the loss of attention span everyone in the world suffers from due to social media and mobile games.
 
Last edited:
  • 1Worf
Reactions: 1 user

Asshat wormie

2023 Asshat Award Winner
<Gold Donor>
16,820
30,968
True story - my girlfriend coming out of uni was a math/chemical engineering dual major. She was fit, good-looking, smart, and, on top of everything else, a classically-trained singer who competed throughout her life.

Eventually she bored of me and moved to California and then Washington State, so all in all I figure I dodged a bullet, but she was definitely a unicorn.

Also, I was brilliant in math in my early life - I made a 100% in my first uni-level differential equations class. I taught myself how to solve integers while writing my first year calculus exam because I had 5 exams in 3 days and I didn't have enough time to prepare completely. I was one of only 2 people to pass the first midterm in our advanced Fluid Dynamics course when we started with the simulations of pin hole leaks and v-shaped weirs.

And if you held a gun to my head right now and told me to solve the simplest of equations, I would just tell you to pull the trigger. So much gets lost over time and without practice.

When I was younger I had nearly eidetic recall, but in my dotage I have lost a lot of that skill. I think the brain gets far less flexible and agile as you age, and going back to uni would be brutal, not even mentioning the loss of attention span everyone in the world suffers from due to social media and mobile games.
Take up math again as a hobby. Nothing better intellectually. And it’s like riding a bike, it all comes back fast enough.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

Attog

Blackwing Lair Raider
2,451
1,884
Graduated from law school, passed the bar, got hired on as an assistant DA at one of the busiest county attorney's office in the midwest. Going to trade in 25 years of IT work making easy money for a job fighting crime that pays peanuts. May be crazy.
First anniversary as a prosecutor, I have one case being appealed, just found out it is bypassing the appellate court and going straight to the state supreme court. I'm goin to The Show!
 
  • 3Like
  • 1Solidarity
  • 1Quality Calories
Reactions: 4 users

Tarrant

<Prior Amod>
15,896
9,295
First anniversary as a prosecutor, I have one case being appealed, just found out it is bypassing the appellate court and going straight to the state supreme court. I'm goin to The Show!
Good luck!! Any details you can share? I’m sure the answers no but I had to ask lol