Random UniMaths Craptalking

[abeybaby]

St Kevin's College is very accessible, in fact it virtually has its own private train station.
The teacher at that school is very experienced and a damn good bloke.

Now, while I am at it, and without knowing what each individual's reasons for doing UMEP Maths is, I can offer the follwoing general advice for ambitious students who want to do well in the subject.

1. It aint easy. The maths is a few notches more advanced than Specialist Mathematics

2. No matter how good your teacher is, this is not the sort of subject that your teacher can fully teach you in the small number of available contact hours. 90% of your learning will be self-directed. I know of one student who never attended a single lesson, and yet got full marks at the end-of-year exam.

3. UMEP maths is essentially a course in Linear Algebra (Matrices, Vector Spaces), and I strongly recommend you get your hands on the Anton & Rorres textbook to get the required insight into these topics. Some other bits and pieces are covered as well such as Number Theory, Mathematical proof (esp Induction), Complex Numbers (exponential form) and some multivariate calculus. For those latter topics you can just about get by with the UMEP notes only (which the University provides).

4. Do ALL the problems in the book, including The Past Exams and Typical Exam  problems.

To cut a long story short, the course is not starightforward, but if you do it seriously, it is rewarding. You can just about start calling yourself a mathematician  

I have to say that i disagree... i wagged every 3rd class or so, did literally 0 problems from the book and studied for 6 hours before the exams. that was the extent of my UMEP... i think it will very much vary from person to person

MOD EDIT: Split for going way off-topic

[tram]

Yeah thats cos you're a freak abes haha. I think the course is reasonably challenging, the bulk of my study done in the entire year was done the week and a half between my final vce exam and the uemp exam. If you're a decent VCE maths student (so say looking at 40+) you should be able to cope, but is not exactly a walk in the park

btw how'd you end up going for a-maths 2 abes? i'm just bloddy glad i passed haha

[abeybaby]

Yeah thats cos you're a freak abes haha. I think the course is reasonably challenging, the bulk of my study done in the entire year was done the week and a half between my final vce exam and the uemp exam. If you're a decent VCE maths student (so say looking at 40+) you should be able to cope, but is not exactly a walk in the park

btw how'd you end up going for a-maths 2 abes? i'm just bloddy glad i passed haha

dude i virtually failed.. 63

[tram]

Yeah thats cos you're a freak abes haha. I think the course is reasonably challenging, the bulk of my study done in the entire year was done the week and a half between my final vce exam and the uemp exam. If you're a decent VCE maths student (so say looking at 40+) you should be able to cope, but is not exactly a walk in the park

btw how'd you end up going for a-maths 2 abes? i'm just bloddy glad i passed haha

dude i virtually failed.. 63

haha you passed that's what matters, Ps make degrees!

[Planck's constant]

I have to say that i disagree... i wagged every 3rd class or so, did literally 0 problems from the book and studied for 6 hours before the exams. that was the extent of my UMEP... i think it will very much vary from person to person

I can only relate to you the fact that I did better than you did in Maths Methods  in Year 11, and I rate to do considerably better than you did in Specialist Mathematics in Year 12 (this year).

I am therefore well placed to say that there is no way known that you can properly comprehend all of UMEP maths with the amount of work you claim to have done.

[Special At Specialist]

I have to say that i disagree... i wagged every 3rd class or so, did literally 0 problems from the book and studied for 6 hours before the exams. that was the extent of my UMEP... i think it will very much vary from person to person

I can only relate to you the fact that I did better than you did in Maths Methods  in Year 11, and I rate to do considerably better than you did in Specialist Mathematics in Year 12 (this year).

I am therefore well placed to say that there is no way known that you can properly comprehend all of UMEP maths with the amount of work you claim to have done.

Better than a 49 and considerably better than a 47?
Does that mean you got two 50's in methods and specialist?

[funkyducky]

Hmm I studied for UMEP in true uni student style: did nothing except my assignments all year (and didn't even do a few of the assignments), wagged heaps of Friday morning tutes (7am? really?), crammed all my study into the week before the exams. I learnt all of the exam 1 content in the 4 days before exam 1, then did all my exam 2 study in a weekend, still pulled off a H1. It's doable. I admit, I didn't fully follow everything we were learning throughout the year, but I had so many lightbulb moments in the week cramming leading up to exams, I felt like I understood so much more after revising it.
 

I am therefore well placed to say that there is no way known that you can properly comprehend all of UMEP maths with the amount of work you claim to have done.

So yes, I assure you, it is possible to comprehend all of UMEP maths with the amount of work that abes did, if you're good at maths. Last year, I went on NMSS and learnt a bunch of number theory, chaos theory and topology in the space of two weeks. Some of that stuff is 3rd year uni level. It's quite possible to learn and understand large volumes of high level maths in a small space of time if it is taught well/if you go about learning it in the correct fashion.

[Planck's constant]

Does that mean you got two 50's in methods and specialist?

Yes and very likely

Back to the topic.

I can just about buy the fact that you can learn to parrot the solutions of previous years exams with not a great amount of work, but you cannot learn what amounts to a full semester of an undergrad course in Linear Algebra (plus other bits and pieces thrown in for good measure) without some hard purposeful study.

Learning Fourrier series approximation in itself (which is only a small part of Inner Product spaces which in turn is a small part of the course) takes more than 6 hours in itself.

Anyone who claims otherwise is (how can I put this diplomatically?) ... a six letter word which starts with 'w' and ends in 'r' ?


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[funkyducky]

Does that mean you got two 50's in methods and specialist?

Yes and very likely

Says the same guy who posted this last year:

Hi there,

I have just received my ATAR : 88.6
(Raw Study Scores, English 43, Literature 40, Aust History 37, Legal Studies 36, Further Maths 32)

My current 1st preference is Arts at Uni.of.Melb, which last year had a Clearly-In ATAR of 89

My question is this : Should I stick to my 1st preference, and how do you rate my chances of getting an offer.

Thanks in advance, folks

What is going on here?

EDIT:

Anyone who claims otherwise is (how can I put this diplomatically?) ... a six letter word which starts with 'w' and ends in 'r' ?

WINNER?

Split, feel free to continue debating the point here

[Planck's constant]

What is going on here?

My brother, if you must know.
And having gone through the trouble of digging up those posts of a year ago, it would not have escaped your attention that those first 2 posts from a year ago cannot be from the same person as the one who has began posting a week ago on threads which are predominantly about mathematics, no ?

Anyway, having enetered the fray, how long did it take you to learn Fourier Series approximation ?

.

[funkyducky]

Yeah (I was having fun being a detective like Sherlock Holmes )

EDIT: lol I don't even remember learning Fourier Series Approximation (must be one of the lectures that I missed lol). I guess you have a point there. But what I have learnt, I know I learnt properly.

but anyway, if no one has anything constructive to add to the discussion/debate, I'm gonna lock this thread.

[TrueTears]

i tend to agree with argonaut on the length of time needed to study specific topics, sure one can learn some aspects of number theory, combinatorics etc under a few hours however to actually understand the basics and then the more advanced requires much more work, ie, constant thinking about relevant concepts every single day. I'm not necessarily talking about UMEP here but rather mathematics at a higher level in general, one does not need to do exercises and practice questions over and over, in fact i haven't done any maths exercises since year 12, however thinking about problems and going off on tangents when you think about a problem is crucial for higher understanding


however doing better than someone in VCE maths means jack shit lol I did better than kamil in vce maths, does that mean i am in a higher position than kamil? no fkn way, kamil rapes me anyday

[paulsterio]

I have to say that i disagree... i wagged every 3rd class or so, did literally 0 problems from the book and studied for 6 hours before the exams. that was the extent of my UMEP... i think it will very much vary from person to person

I can only relate to you the fact that I did better than you did in Maths Methods  in Year 11, and I rate to do considerably better than you did in Specialist Mathematics in Year 12 (this year).

I am therefore well placed to say that there is no way known that you can properly comprehend all of UMEP maths with the amount of work you claim to have done.

how are you positioned to have an opinion on what abes understands about UMEP maths?

[Planck's constant]

EDIT: lol I don't even remember learning Fourier Series Approximation (must be one of the lectures that I missed lol). I guess you have a point there. But what I have learnt, I know I learnt properly.

It was one of the last problems on the Inner Product Spaces sheet, basically an application of least squares curve fitting, but instead of fitting a first or second degree polynomial to the data, you fit circular functions.

It was part of the course, but never on an exam as far as I know.

Which brings me to my main point, there is a difference between learning to get a UMEP increment of 5.5 (thats a relatively easy thing to do)  and actually LEARNING UMEP maths


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[TrueTears]

there is a difference between learning to get a UMEP increment of 5.5 (thats a relatively easy thing to do)  and actually LEARNING UMEP maths

very very true

if i assume your definition of learning is the same as a mathematician's XD