Favorite class?

[dark_drake]

What's yours and why?

I'll start.  Mine is any sort of mathematics.  I prefer math courses because they are the only ones that I really enjoy.  They make me think.  I enjoy the stress each difficult problem places upon me; even if it's just a harder homework problem that doesn't mean anything, I will still give it my all to figure it out. Also, grading is based on your ability to think, not on your ability to memorize facts.  Lastly, grading is objective, not subjective.

[Newby]

This year my favorite class was chemistry. It was the perfect blend of facts and mathematics.

But I love math.

[Sidoh]

The problem with chemistry, as dark_drake mentioned, is it is usually the memorization of facts, which I don't like.

For me: Math and Physics.

[Rule]

Lastly, grading is objective, not subjective.

Heh, it seems like it should be, doesn't it? :P.  While less is left up to interpretation than in English, eventually the "right answer" can become meaningless, and your workings are then subject to a biased assessment of how "good" they are. 

Favourite subjects:

Highschool:  Chemistry.  (I had an awesome Chem teacher for 3 years in a row.  He had a great sense of humour, and had strange talents like being able to multiply, (take the logarithm of to any base), take sine, cos, etc,  of 14+ digit numbers together in his head, and have the answer in less than a second.

Undergrad: Math.    After starting to concentrate in Chemistry, I realized that at the higher levels I would never be able to have a real understanding of what I was doing.  They don't explain things at a fundamental level in high level chemistry, so what you learn is only 'useful' in really contrived situations.  Math is very concrete and understandable at a basic level.  I didn't feel like I was bumbling about and waving my hands around in math so much, and the math in university is all 'revolutionary' in the sense that it presents totally new ideas of how to look at things, which in effect, changes how you see the world around you (in ways you wouldn't expect).  After taking a good math course, I felt like I had changed for the better (e.g. I was a more perceptive/intelligent person).  After taking a chem course I felt like I knew more stuff.

Higher level:  Theor. Physics.

I realize that math eventually becomes extremely pedantic.  All the great mathematical pioneers (Newton, Gauss, etc..) were the far less formal than the mathematicians of today.  Because mathematics has grown so much, it is hard to continue extending it.  So, to keep busy, mathematicians of the 20th century decided that they would turn really anal and start formalizing everything to death.  No intuition allowed.  Common sense is shunned.  Nothing is obvious.  Progress is slow. 

As the fields are today, theor. physicists are basically the same species of mathematicians that developed Calculus and geometry: they're concerned with making lots of progress and advancing science, at the expense of not being anal about every tiny little detail.  A string theorist, for example, might create a bunch of new mathematics to describe his theory, and publish his work in a journal in 2 months.   On the other hand, the greatest mathematician's achievement of the 20th century was proving Fermat's last theorem.  It took about 80 years.  Go look the theorem up and see how exciting it is  <sarcasm>.  Typically, a math paper takes at least 5 years to publish :(.   

IMO physics sucks until Lagrangian mechanics though.  Circular motion, blocks sliding down hills, simple harmonic motion, springs  = boring.

Btw, the most important mathematical development of the twentieth century, linear algebra (matrices, etc), was led by a physicist (Heisenberg), who just invented the field on the side while he was trying to describe what we now call "Quantum Mechanics"; his paper was titled "Matrix Mechanics."

That was long.
:o
:P

[Towelie]

This year my favorite class was chemistry. It was the perfect blend of facts and mathematics.

But I love math.

I love math too. (we did have the same classes in middle school...) Chem was cool, but my teacher sucks balls -.-

[trust]

AP Statistics

I hate math. I hate science. I loved this class. Why? Well, our teacher had a baby and there were complications and the baby was sick so we had this awesome long term sub whos mother is a math teacher at our school. We were allowed to leave class (and school since it was the last bell) whenever we finished notes, all of our tests were open notes/partner/he would help+give answers, it was pretty much a guaranteed A. At the end of the year we were excused from class period.

[d&q]

Crazy. AP Statistics was definitely my least favorite class.

[trust]

Crazy. AP Statistisc was definitely my least favorite class.

Yeah, and the teacher is staying to teach it next year and he said it'd be slack next year too. I'm doubting it will be AS slack though, since this summer he's going to take that class to certify teachers or whatever. He had taken Statistics at college (Hampden-Sydney!!!!!!!) and that's why he got to teach us I guess. No complaints from anybody on that. Our final exam/project consisted of doing a heads/tails probability thing..it took like 10 minutes then we were allowed to leave class. I haven't been to that class in like 2 weeks. I just check in with him in the morning so that he knows I came to school and I'm good to go.

[Rule]

Yeah, that's super, but how was the college board's AP Statistics exam after all that great preparation?

[rabbit]

Lastly, grading is objective, not subjective.

Higher level:  Theor. Physics.

I realize that math eventually becomes extremely pedantic.  All the great mathematical pioneers (Newton, Gauss, etc..) were the far less formal than the mathematicians of today.  Because mathematics has grown so much, it is hard to continue extending it.  So, to keep busy, mathematicians of the 20th century decided that they would turn really anal and start formalizing everything to death.  No intuition allowed.  Common sense is shunned.  Nothing is obvious.  Progress is slow. 

As the fields are today, theor. physicists are basically the same species of mathematicians that developed Calculus and geometry: they're concerned with making lots of progress and advancing science, at the expense of not being anal about every tiny little detail.  A string theorist, for example, might create a bunch of new mathematics to describe his theory, and publish his work in a journal in 2 months.   On the other hand, the greatest mathematician's achievement of the 20th century was proving Fermat's last theorem.  It took about 80 years.  Go look the theorem up and see how exciting it is  <sarcasm>.  Typically, a math paper takes at least 5 years to publish :(.   

IMO physics sucks until Lagrangian mechanics though.  Circular motion, blocks sliding down hills, simple harmonic motion, springs  = boring.

Btw, the most important mathematical development of the twentieth century, linear algebra (matrices, etc), was led by a physicist (Heisenberg), who just invented the field on the side while he was trying to describe what we now call "Quantum Mechanics"; his paper was titled "Matrix Mechanics."

That was long.
:o
:P

I hope you understand FLT was like the general theory of relativity of its day.  I kind of enjoyed harmonics.  It was more enjoyable than centripetal forces and elastic interactions and the such.  I was looking into math for my undergrad, but I came to a similar conclusion (though with a smaller vocabulary).  I'd actually like to see Fermat's proof though, I wish he wrote it...

High school: Number Theory, by far.  I had Calc with the same teacher, but I just really loved NT for whatever reason.  I learned sooooo much about primes, and it was just really interesting.  It was me, 3 koreans, and 1 other white guy in the class.  During our double blocks someone would go down to the vendor and get some nice soft pretzels and then head over to Wawa and grab a 64 oz iced tea and we'd all just chill and discuss numbers.  Very fun.

Undergrad: Tell you when I get there...

[Chavo]

High School: AP Psychology.  Really, really, really interesting.  Definately not something I want to do for a living, but everyone should take a psych class just to get a glimpse of some of the fd up things out there.  I did papers on psychosomaticism (insanely cool), manic depression (watch out for these guys), and OCD (which convinced me that everyone is partly OCD).

Undergrad:  Microcontrollers so far, I'm sure that will change when I get into more advanced stuff.  Basically the class is everything you could possibly do with or want to know about one of Motorolla's advanced microcontrollers.  Everything from assembly programming to byte manipulation in RAM, to realtime debugging, to device controllers (LED displays, Serial connections, keyboard programming/input, etc).  Very fun class.

[Rule]

I hope you understand FLT was like the general theory of relativity of its day.  I kind of enjoyed harmonics.  It was more enjoyable than centripetal forces and elastic interactions and the such.  I was looking into math for my undergrad, but I came to a similar conclusion (though with a smaller vocabulary).  I'd actually like to see Fermat's proof though, I wish he wrote it...

xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ

has no non-zero integer solutions for x, y and z when n > 2

Uh, this result is fairly inconsequential, makes almost no connection to reality, and wasn't even proven when Fermat wrote it.  General Relativity is to Fermat's Last Theorem as a time machine is to a child's sketch of an imaginary flower.  Also, it's probable that Fermat didn't actually prove his "last theorem," or that his proof was flawed -- given how long mathematicians have tried to prove it, and how the only known proof is lengthy, extremely complicated, and contains a lot of mathematics ahead of Fermat's time.

[rabbit]

So an impossibility is to a falsehood?  I don't quite get the analogy -.-;;

[Rule]

So an impossibility is to a falsehood?  I don't quite get the analogy -.-;;

1) A time machine is not an impossibility.   An airplane is a time machine, for example.

General Relativity is a theory intimately connected to reality, and has a pronounced effect on engineering, science, and philosophy.  On the other hand, Fermat's Last Theorem was an unproven idea about an abstract concept that holds little bearing on science or even abstract mathematics.  Perhaps now the analogy is more clear: a child's sketch of an non-existent flower makes no connection to reality, is incomplete and roughly presented, and likely has little bearing in the realm of abstract art, while a time machine has great utility, is a tangible invention, and is a topic of intense philosophical interest.

[BigAznDaddy]

my favorite class is weight training
i like to get stronger and pick on the weak jk


my favorite is actually guitar class
i made my own guitar and i was able to keep it at no cost to me
and working on stuff with your hands is so awsome (i made a dog house last saterday)