well that's the thing. i don't think professors will bother to spend time to come up with contest-like, deep-thinking questions for their tests. and from what I've seen all of my test questions so far have been very schaum's-like. i have yet to see a test question that requires me to know the...
i think theoretically a student could study from schaum's outlines alone and still do well on tests (since that is what they're meant for), but he would not gain enough understanding on untestable aspects and would bomb an oral exam.
what are your opinions on schaum's outlines? is it meant as a supplementary guide for students who are struggling? or is it good for students of all skill levels? i noticed that many of the problems (in math) are just asking you to prove theorems already found in textbooks. on the other...
oops, i was talking about afternoon greenwich mean time.
start reading: 15:00 GMT
start test: 18:00 GMT
hand in test: 21:00 GMT
this should be ok for people from western us to eastern asia. if 3 hours reading and 3 hours test is still too long, make it 2 and 2.
i for one would like to take the test, not as a competition but as a self-diagnostic--for my own good. but make it a 3 hour reading period (multiply the scores by 4 if you want to answer your poll question). in a 3 hour reading period, i don't think the people interested in the topic will have...
what does "hand waving" mean? is it like looking at a part of a solution that requires mathematical rigour to justify but then you just say "Blah, that's pretty obvious, let's move on..." the purpose of this is to avoid being distracted by mathematical rigour so as to be more focused on the...
let's get this right: at 30+ pages per day, that's 1 entire textbook in less than 2 weeks. and this a textbook of new material which is at your current skill level, and this is fully understanding the entire content of the book. this to me sounds like more than the completion an entire course...
hmmm... i never really kept track. let's see: since we can only count proof-based textbooks, i cannot count the textbooks i read up to calculus 1. after calculus 1, i read about 10 math textbooks = 5000 pages. this was done over 3 years, but take off one year because the physics textbooks i...
this brings me back to my thread (math and physics program). einstein did not add very much to his own theory of relativity because the other relativists (schwartzchild, kerr, etc...) were equipped with more sophisticated mathematics then einstein. this finally convinces me that having a full...
so perhaps the professor was brilliant in his research but just could not get funding for his research because his research, though creative and original, was not considered important? how sad.
Thanks alot! I've learned about half of the above list of prerequisite mathematics so far. So I'll just continue to try to finish learning the rest of the mathematics. By then I'll have an adequate mathematical toolbox to study whatever has become of loop quantum gravity and/or string theory...
Here is a list of the mathematics one needs to know for string theory (i'm skipping the simple 1st and 2nd year math courses).
http://superstringtheory.com/math/index.html
Real analysis
In real analysis, students learn abstract properties of real functions as mappings, isomorphism, fixed...
but i never in this thread referred to that type of "why". i only referred to mathematical "why"s. and it is the "mathematical whys" that many physics students are missing out on because of the restricted math used in their classes. at least that's what i believe.