Minor in Mathematics: Questions Answered

[z-component]

Hiya,

Aside from my study in engineering, I want to pursue a minor in mathematics. I'm wondering how much experience with mathematics I'll have by doing this minor. The minor requires 26-28 credits, but 12 are from 400-level courses. Does anyone have any experience with math minors?

 

[mr_coffee]

It depends what type of engineering you are doing, if your doing Computer Engineering you can pick up a math minor in little or no effort, just pick your courses smart when you hit the 400 level CSE courses.

Pick the ones that also have a MATH/CSE next to them, and you also have to take stat 417 and 418 i think, but as a CE your already required to take a 400 level stat class. So if you take it from that perspective, you won't learn much more math doing the math minor.

Also if your in computer science engineering it will be easy, but I'm not sure how different it if your in some other engineering.

 

[leon1127]

What about if you list all classes that you are required or intersted to take.
In my school, a maths minor is 3 classes away from being a maths major; a stat minor requires more stat classes than a stat degree does... lol

 

[physics girl phd]

At my undergrad institution (and when I was attending), you were required to have some certain number of credit hours at the "300-400 level" for a math minor... but since I wanted the minor to be a "strong" minor, I took the most advanced math classes that usually only math majors took... skipping things like "intermediate analysis" to go directly to "advanced analysis" etc.

So in my experience, you have the leeway to make what you want of a math minor -- if you think the 12 hours of upper level aren't giving you enough experience with mathematics along the lines that you want, take more upper level and less intermediate... or like leon1127 says above, it's often easy to take just a few extra classes and have a double major (a lot of my friends did, but I chose to also minor in Chem instead). The fun things about minors IS tailoring them to complement your major!

 

[z-component]

Mathematics Minor

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MINOR: 26-28 credits

PRESCRIBED COURSES (8 credits)
MATH 140 GQ(4), MATH 141 GQ(4) (Sem: 1-4)

ADDITIONAL COURSES (6-8 credits)
Select 6-8 credits from MATH 220 GQ(2), MATH 230(4), MATH 231(2), MATH 232(2), MATH 250(3), MATH 251(4), MATH 310(3), MATH 311W(3-4), or MATH 312(3) (Sem: 1-4)

SUPPORTING COURSES AND RELATED AREAS (12 credits)
Select 12 credits of 400-level MATH courses (Sem: 5-8)

My major will cover the prescribed courses and additional courses. I need to take the 12 400-level credits. The list of courses can be found here: http://www.psu.edu/bulletins/bluebook/courses/math.htm .

I think I want a semi-"strong" minor that will give me greater understanding. But as you can see there are about a hundred 400-level math courses, so I can't even begin to narrow those down to 12 credits (about 4 courses) worth.

 

[physics girl phd]

What is your field of engineering? What are your subfields of interest? That will help people in recommending particular classes. Also -- while there might be a large listing, maybe not ALL the courses are always offered... where sometimes a semester-by-semester analysis of the departmental offerings comes in.

 

[z-component]

I'm Aerospace Engineering thinking about specifying to aeronautics. It's too early to decide which specific areas of math I'm interested in since I've only been exposed to calculus. Next semester I'll be taking Linear Algebra and calc II, so I guess I'll see.