On the OU philosophy paper scandal

Zoo_View said:
Math 31, 32, 33, 34 (and maybe 30) were Calculus and Differential Equations classes in the mid-‘80’s.

I don’t think class numbers or names had changed much since the late ‘60’s (maybe earlier). My Dad taught a hard science “11” (intro class) since 1967 and well into the late ‘80’s, if not early ‘90’s.
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Why would one need differential equations for non engineering or math majors?
 
UNCatTech said:
Why would one need differential equations for non engineering or math majors?
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I was simply agreeing with O5C40’s nomenclature for Math classes at UNC way back when and into the ‘80’s.

Maybe the business school was using Diff EQ to weed out some students. A huge shit ton of UNC students in the late ‘70’s and ‘80’s wanted to be in the business school for undergrad. A great many of those wannabes were Industrial Relations majors.

I couldn’t tell you which class Math 31/32/33/34 was.
 
Blurb said:
That’s interesting. What level do you teach?

I’ve embraced a bit of a Pavlovian approach where I give them immediate 0s on their missed work in the first/second week of class with no makeups. It craters their overall average in the LMS, which at that point is meaningless given over 98% of the work is yet to come, but tends to wake up some students about the consequences of missing work.
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HS American History and IB Psychology mostly 11th and 12th graders. I appreciate the Pavlov reference.
 
Zoo_View said:
I’d love to see a paper or exam with a negative grade!

That seems like a particularly persnickety instructor.
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It was a true false test with a guess penalty.

Let's say there were 20 questions. You'd get 5 per right answer. You'd get 0 for skipping. You'd lose 5 for a wrong answer. So if you answered all questions and got 9 right, you'd get 9*5 - 11*5 = -10.

Bad format
 
superrific said:
It was a true false test with a guess penalty.

Let's say there were 20 questions. You'd get 5 per right answer. You'd get 0 for skipping. You'd lose 5 for a wrong answer. So if you answered all questions and got 9 right, you'd get 9*5 - 11*5 = -10.

Bad format
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Damn!

Doesn’t the SAT have a guess penalty?

And can be gamed by kids from families that can pay for SAT courses?
 
stankeylegjones said:
Being able to solve and then understand the solution to a differential equation is a good skill to have for many jobs. I will say, for mathematics majors, it's low on the pecking order or concepts.
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Yes critical thinking is great, but many people choose their majors based on their personal skills, if one is not a good at math they would choose a major that would better align with their strengths. The business major may not be able to pass differential equations.

I was always good at math and that class was hard for me. At the same time I knew I want as good at English, so journalism was out of the question.

I guess I just don't see the alignment between business major and differential equations.
 
Zoo_View said:
Math 31, 32, 33, 34 (and maybe 30) were Calculus and Differential Equations classes in the mid-‘80’s.

I don’t think class numbers or names had changed much since the late ‘60’s (maybe earlier). My Dad taught a hard science “11” (intro class) since 1967 and well into the late ‘80’s, if not early ‘90’s.
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IIRC, the lead-in to Math 31 was Math 15. If you took four years of math in high school, then UNC would start you at Math 31. If not, you started at Math 15.
 
05C40 said:
IIRC, the lead-in to Math 31 was Math 15. If you took four years of math in high school, then UNC would start you at Math 31. If not, you started at Math 15.
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You’re likely correct. And, that class nomenclature existed well into the ‘80’s and maybe into the ‘90’s.

I farted off in math in high school. I didn’t take 15; I’d taken an equivalent at Alaska-Fairbanks and learned the key to most math classes - do the homework each-and-every day. Rigorously. And, math was easy. Until some point in Diff EQ.

IIRC, there was a “Calculus for Business Majors” in the mid’80’s.
 
UNCatTech said:
Yes critical thinking is great, but many people choose their majors based on their personal skills, if one is not a good at math they would choose a major that would better align with their strengths. The business major may not be able to pass differential equations.

I was always good at math and that class was hard for me. At the same time I knew I want as good at English, so journalism was out of the question.

I guess I just don't see the alignment between business major and differential equations.
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Sorry, I was speaking about jobs not just in business. Regarding business majors, I would think understanding them would prove beneficial for understanding modeling various scenarios.

Whether it’s a good gatekeeper or not, I have no clue.
 
stankeylegjones said:
Regarding business majors, I would think understanding them would prove beneficial for understanding modeling various scenarios.
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Derivatives? Yes. Differential equations? Doubtful. Very doubtful. anything that would require a diff equation would be sent to IT or data science or an outside vendor to do.

You're probably not that familiar with corporate America. It's a place where "math" means "arithmetic." And when people say, "I'm bad at math," they are usually referring to making a multiplication error. I'm like, "yes, you are bad at math but not for the reasons you think." If you're lucky, you might find someone who can do some algebra.

Law schools and lawyers are little better. Law professors love to make up hypotheticals like: suppose the value of this item is $100. A had agreed to buy it from B for $95, and now C wants to buy it from A for $105. Should A sell to B or C? This is what passes for "math" in law school. In some courses there's a little bit more than that, but I can't remember ever seeing basic algebra, let alone anything harder. I suspect that maybe 15,20% of my students could pass a high school geometry exam.

Now, in the hedge fund world -- the quant segment of it -- diff eq is absolutely valued. You probably know PhDs in math or physics who went to work in finance. That's totally different. Some of those financial models are crazy intricate.
 
superrific said:
Derivatives? Yes. Differential equations? Doubtful. Very doubtful. anything that would require a diff equation would be sent to IT or data science or an outside vendor to do.

You're probably not that familiar with corporate America. It's a place where "math" means "arithmetic." And when people say, "I'm bad at math," they are usually referring to making a multiplication error. I'm like, "yes, you are bad at math but not for the reasons you think." If you're lucky, you might find someone who can do some algebra.

Law schools and lawyers are little better. Law professors love to make up hypotheticals like: suppose the value of this item is $100. A had agreed to buy it from B for $95, and now C wants to buy it from A for $105. Should A sell to B or C? This is what passes for "math" in law school. In some courses there's a little bit more than that, but I can't remember ever seeing basic algebra, let alone anything harder. I suspect that maybe 15,20% of my students could pass a high school geometry exam.

Now, in the hedge fund world -- the quant segment of it -- diff eq is absolutely valued. You probably know PhDs in math or physics who went to work in finance. That's totally different. Some of those financial models are crazy intricate.
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Yes, I definitely know very little corporate America. And yes, many grad students here will go on to being quants, as well at our neighboring universities.
 
When I did my MBA in the mid-2000s, we were taught (went over?) derivatives and very basic differential equations as part of the finance portion of our classes. You probably didn't need to really understand it to pass.

The finance folks did more in their concentration classes, although I'm not sure how much. I did a decent deal more because, despite not being a finance bro, I took a class in data modeling.

But none of us, at least that I saw, were doing anything too complex with differential equations.
 
Zoo_View said:
. . ., the key to most math classes - do the homework each-and-every day. . . ..
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DUDE! That isn't just the key to math classes, that is THE KEY TO LIFE. How many millions of trees have been felled and how many million gallons of ink have been wasted, all just trying to say what you said in half a sentence!
 
05C40 said:
IIRC, the lead-in to Math 31 was Math 15. If you took four years of math in high school, then UNC would start you at Math 31. If not, you started at Math 15.
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You guys have weird numbering.

We had four digit numbers for all classes. First digit was approximate year (1 a freshman, etc). That is pretty common. Last digit was credit hours which is far less common but kind of handy.
 
Zoo_View said:
You’re likely correct. And, that class nomenclature existed well into the ‘80’s and maybe into the ‘90’s.

I farted off in math in high school. I didn’t take 15; I’d taken an equivalent at Alaska-Fairbanks and learned the key to most math classes - do the homework each-and-every day. Rigorously. And, math was easy. Until some point in Diff EQ.

IIRC, there was a “Calculus for Business Majors” in the mid’80’s.
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I tutored my suite mate on business calculus. He was a f’ing idiot.

The doing homework thing really resonates. Also actually attending every class is pretty darn important in technical classes because you can easily get lost which can have a domino effect. I went from being a good student the first 2.5 years to getting a girlfriend, being dumped, and completely losing focus for a year and a half. (The girl was a HS senior and her parents forbid her to see me because she had written me some explicit letters. She didn’t actually dump me but didn’t matter. She was my first girlfriend and at the time I figured my last.)
 
I was thinking last night about my first exposure to calculus. The first thing is limits and explicitly the sigma epsilon definition. I stared at that for about 3 hours before it clicked. I was like maybe I can’t do this. I am convinced that they do that to weed out students right off the bat. Haha. The rest of the first semester was pretty easy.

I fully understand that definition but to this day I don’t get why such a formal treatment is mathematically necessary. Sure, I agree that anything function meeting the criteria will have the stated limit but it seems arbitrarily complex.
 
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