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To: Thane_Banquo
"Our educational system is horrible at teaching maths and sciences."

My daughter is pursuing her Chemical Eng. degree and her first semester she struggled with Calculus. Her instructor's heavy accent was not the only issue, the huge size of her class prevented her from any personal instruction, the assistants were only interested in spending time with the 'pretty' girls, the study groups were only interested in their own homework issues and the math labs where no different.

I told her to start at the beginning of her text book and teach herself and never, ever trust your education to your instructor. I gave her suggestions on learning new concepts on her own and after only two months, she brought her D grade up to a B, and she finished her course with an 'A'. She called after her first perfect score on a Calc exam and exclaimed, "I taught myself Calculus!"

67 posted on 04/29/2009 8:08:58 AM PDT by DocRock (All they that TAKE the sword shall perish with the sword. Matthew 26:52 Gun grabbers beware.)
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To: DocRock
My daughter is pursuing her Chemical Eng. degree and her first semester she struggled with Calculus. Her instructor's heavy accent was not the only issue, the huge size of her class prevented her from any personal instruction, the assistants were only interested in spending time with the 'pretty' girls, the study groups were only interested in their own homework issues and the math labs where no different.

Sounds familiar. I think part of this is affirmative action in Universities, hiring foreigners to look "diverse."

Tell your daughter I found Calc 1 to be the hardest of the calculus courses, because you have to learn an entirely new way of looking at math. Tell her if she keeps with it, in a few semesters after Calc 3 she'll be able to take Differential Equations, which is by far the funnest math course.

Also, if she's looking for an elective, Statistical Theory is really cool, and nothing like intro Stats courses.

72 posted on 04/29/2009 8:28:56 AM PDT by Thane_Banquo (President George W. Bush, RINO-in-Chief.)
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