{"id":241,"date":"2016-09-03T18:53:26","date_gmt":"2016-09-04T01:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/?p=241"},"modified":"2016-09-03T18:55:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-04T01:55:00","slug":"course-review-math-215","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/2016\/09\/03\/course-review-math-215\/","title":{"rendered":"Course Review: MATH 215"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elementary Differential Equations I<\/b><\/p>\n

“UBC is a very progressive place…Because you get to learn Linear Algebra before Differential Equations!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Text:\u00a0<\/strong>Notes on Diffy Qs: Differential Equations for Engineers, by Jiri Lebl<\/p>\n

Prof:<\/strong>\u00a0Dr Dan Coombs<\/p>\n

Dr\u00a0Dan Coombs has great British accent, and a wry sense of humour which helps to keep interest in the class. He tries to balance between tolerating conceptual questions and making progress in the more recipe-oriented curriculum. He spent a lot of effort restructuring the curriculum to be based on Linear Algebra, so as to make the class more conceptual and slightly less “formula-up-my-sleeve” math, though it still is.<\/p>\n

\n

Difficulty<\/strong><\/p>\n

The homework is really exhausting. The hand calculations have awful numbers in them, making them really tedious. The Matlab is … Matlab. As a CS student I thought Matlab would be a breeze, but that was not the case, as the language has a lot of quirks. The number of questions in a homework set is a lot considering the time each one takes. With the exception of the first homework, where we were given real world problems and had to come with models for them, I didn’t feel I got a lot out of the homework, except learning a few random facts about Matlab after trial and error.<\/p>\n

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Key Concepts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Modelling nature as a differential equation<\/p>\n

First order linear equations<\/p>\n

Linear systems of differential equations<\/p>\n

Laplace transform<\/p>\n

Non-linear systems<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hard Concepts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Partial fractions: Thought they were pretty easy, but had a really gross one on the final<\/p>\n

Non-linear classification of fixed points: Can get a bit confused between different fixed points<\/p>\n

Classification of 2nd order linear systems: If you don’t want to re-derive them, need to be able to recall them quickly.<\/p>\n

\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Homework was a schlep. Interesting topic, but recipe-driven curriculum almost kills it. IMHO, focus should be modelling natural phenomenon. The problem with the recipe driven approach, even for non-math students, is that (1) Engineers will probably just use Wolfram\/computer system to solve it anyway. (2) While it might be helpful for them to classify what can\/cannot be solved etc, odds are if it is non-linear you will try your luck, or use a linear approximation anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elementary Differential Equations I “UBC is a very progressive place…Because you get to learn Linear Algebra before Differential Equations!” Text:\u00a0Notes on Diffy Qs: Differential Equations for Engineers, by Jiri Lebl Prof:\u00a0Dr Dan Coombs Dr\u00a0Dan Coombs has great British accent, and a wry sense of humour which helps to keep interest in the class. He tries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28516,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[281864],"tags":[1171107,1171185,1171184,1250,1171116,37,1171104],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-reviews","tag-calculus-ubc","tag-dan-coombs","tag-differential-equations-1","tag-funny","tag-physics-ubc","tag-ubc","tag-ubc-math"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28516"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/organizingchaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}