Washington, DC & Multivariable calculus course advice

[ashramsoji]

Hi,

I need to take Multivariable Calculus this summer. I live in Washington, DC and I work full-time so I'm trying to find a university that offers the course at a convenient time. I'm also taking a big trip in the middle of July, so my options are pretty limited.

I just applied for the MS Statistics at Georgetown, GW, and UMD.

UMD offers the course at a time that conflicts with my trip.
GW, Georgetown, and Catholic University all offer the course. Catholic's is in the evening and I live fairly close to it, so that option is the best in terms of logistics.


Does anyone know anything about Catholic's math department? I don't want to take the course at a community college as i tried doing that for Linear Algebra and had to withdraw. I don't want to have the same experience with Catholic.

If it helps, I think my top choice for the MS is GW, so I'm not sure if I should just try to take the course there.

 

EDIT: I should mention that while GW and CUA have comparable rates for summer school, Georgetown's is about $1000, and cost is something of a factor.

Edited April 10, 2014 by vashts85

[ParanoidAndroid]

Are you required to register in a summer course by your graduate program? Or do you just need to be familiar with the material? 

 

If the latter, I would suggest using online references for vector calculus (there are a ton of great ones, like MIT Courseware). It certainly beats paying to take a course. 

Edited April 10, 2014 by ParanoidAndroid

[stats_applicant]

My guess is that a calculus course probably wouldn't be too different no matter where you took it (though perhaps your experience with linear algebra disagrees with me).

[MastersHoping]

Why did you have to withdraw from your cc course?

And yeah multivariate calculus is pretty standard anywhere. Do you actually need a credit-bearing course or just the content knowledge? If the latter, my gut reaction, like ParanoidAndroid said, would be to do MIT OpenCourseWare or a MOOC. 

 

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-02sc-multivariable-calculus-fall-2010/

 

Probably one of the better online Multivariate Calc courses imo 

Edited April 10, 2014 by MastersHoping

[ashramsoji]

Thanks for the reply everyone. To answer all your questions:

 

I've never taken MVC, and the one acceptance I have thus far did not specify I had to take the course.

 

Yes, I could take it from OCW, but I'm not sure I have quite the necessary capability to learn it well enough for when I start the Mathematical Statistics courses. I'm very disciplined and I (think) I am smart enough to learn it, but not without some assistance. I worry about not learning it very well, starting graduate courses, and struggling mightily given that I've heard the first few courses are very mathematically intensive. In the past I've always gotten A in mathematical courses, so I know I have the capability. I just want to be sharp when I start grad school because I don't have the flexibility of struggling (I work full-time and will continue doing so).

 

Also, I've also only heard from one school thus far. It's highly possible that GW or UMD will ask me to take it before I can start graduate school.

 

I withdrew from my Linear Algebra course because it was clear the professor was not going to teach us anything beyond solving systems of equations (in the simplest sense). I can go on at length about how bad the class was, but ultimately he was satisfied with just teaching us a few formulas and getting us to practice a few problems. There weren't any real lectures, and not because he was so mathematically beyond the students that he couldn't organize his thoughts. It was a big time commitment for me to go to class as it was during the day and I work full-time. I felt my time would be better spent reviewing calculus in preparation for MVC.

 

For the record, I did try watching all of the OCW lectures from Strang and teach LA to myself, but I think a combination of a really bad textbook (Anton) and perhaps not being all that mathematically awesome just made it impossible for me to teach myself the subject well enough that I'd feel prepared going into graduate school.

[stats_applicant]

For what it's worth, I think linear algebra courses vary much more in content than calculus courses do.

[ParanoidAndroid]

On 4/10/2014 at 2:46 PM, vashts85 said:

Yes, I could take it from OCW, but I'm not sure I have quite the necessary capability to learn it well enough for when I start the Mathematical Statistics courses. I'm very disciplined and I (think) I am smart enough to learn it, but not without some assistance. I worry about not learning it very well, starting graduate courses, and struggling mightily given that I've heard the first few courses are very mathematically intensive. In the past I've always gotten A in mathematical courses, so I know I have the capability. I just want to be sharp when I start grad school because I don't have the flexibility of struggling (I work full-time and will continue doing so).

 

Working full time and taking an intensive course will be difficult. At least if you study on your own, you can work at your own pace. Honestly, the OCW video lectures are top notch and chances are you're not going to get better instruction anywhere else. Plus, they supplement the lectures with readings, notes and assignments. Above all, they're free!

 

As an alternative, have you looked at Coursera? They offer free week long courses in many subjects. This one is being offered by WashU starting May 19th:

 

https://www.coursera.org/course/mathematicalmethods

 

Mathematical Methods for Quantitative Finance

 

The Mathematical Methods for Quantitative Finance course reviews the mathematical methods fundamental for the study of quantitative and computational finance. The areas of focus include calculus and multivariable calculus, constrained and unconstrained optimization, and linear algebra. 

Topics covered include the following:

• Functions and inverse functions
• Limits, derivatives, partial derivatives, and chain rule
• Integrals and multiple integrals, changing the order of differentiation and integration
• Taylor series approximations
• Newton’s method
• Lagrange multiplier method
• Vector and matrix arithmetic, determinants, eigenvalue-eigenvector decomposition, singular value decomposition
• Numerical methods for optimization 

This is pretty much the standard material you learn in a MVC course, minus the big theorems (Green, Stokes, Gauss).