What's harder? Math, Physics or Engineering?

[Kalimaa23]

I think that pure mathematics is the hardest, hands down. A lot of people who say "Aw, math is easy!" probably never took a "real" math course. By that I mean that they probably never went beyond the calculus/linear algebra/diff eq sequence required of engineering majors. Once you get away from those grind-out-the-calculations courses, you get into the real meat of the issue: proving theorems.

Well, you get a lot of that as a physics undergraduate as well in this country. The idea is that if you're going to use mathematics, you might as well learn the theory behind it. So every physics student tags along with the mathematicians and gets algebra, analysis, etc... courses that are aimed at math students, so with no practical applications in mind whatsoever. You know, that kind of course that goes : axiom-theorem-proof-theorem-proof-lemma-theorem-proof-lemma-lemma-lemma-theorem-proof, etc...

It is tough at first, but once you get used to it, math becomes a whole lot less difficult. I still hold that physics is harder.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Learning undergraduate math, even the abstract kind is heavy on memorization, and I suppose easier than undergraduate physics with all those calculations. But doing math; i.e. thinking up new theorems, is harder than almost anything, and I believe there are fewer clues than in physics to help you along.

 

[Sting]

Asking which subject is harder depends on who you are asking.

What is "harder" is purely subjective. Person A might find math a lot harder than physics and Person B might find physics a lot harder than math.

I concur with Tom. A lot of people think math is limited to introductory calculus (which I find a joke) and differential equations. Most people fail to note specializations like Real Analysis, Complex Analysis, and Topology which are not simply "plug in and turn the mathematical crank." Those are subjects with a basis in proof writing.