its not about the existence of a set standard, its about the relative coolness of each letter, z is the slightly more obscure axes, as is phi the more obscure letter, thus making them equal on a relative coolness scale.
heh, that's quite well justified. fair enough point.
that being said, i probably use phi more often than theta in my maths assignments.
why would they have that in a second year course? 
it's pretty easy stuff
The reason it is second year is because at monash, people who don't do spec. maths do this:
year 1 semester 1, MTH1020 (like specialist)
sem. 2 MTH 1030 (first year maths)
second year MTH 2010, multivariable. It is a second year subject simply due to its time of taking place in a maths major.
Anyway, is any maths "hard" if you do it enough (by that I don't mean prove the Taniyama-Shimura Conjecture maths, just routine, discovered yonks ago and institutionalised maths)
wow, that's really kinda weird... stupid monash. they make maths way too easy there, ruins the point.
and meh, i suppose not, for calculation-style maths. but for things like analysis and algebra where you have to prove things it's not always obvious what the best approach is, so even with heaps of experience it's easy to get stuck - friends at uni have asked me for help on an assignment for a course i did last year, and i got just as stuck trying to work out how to do it as they were.
Home
Help
Search
Login
