Should I retake Trig for a PhD in Political Science?

[ColtonLong]

Yeah, fair enough. I was responding less to the original post and more to the general tone of this and other threads, which seem to me to be over-emphasizing math courses as the core preparation for PhD admission. Failing a course is not going to look good on your file. But I'm not sure that the specific course (basic or upper level) or what subject area makes a difference in how it will be seen. The problem here is a failed course, not a failed math course.

For what it's worth, thank you for your input. I've taken miminal math during my undergraduate career and, from what I've read on it here, it was starting to terrify me. 

[AmericanQuant]

For what it's worth, thank you for your input. I've taken miminal math during my undergraduate career and, from what I've read on it here, it was starting to terrify me. 

 

So this is a bit of thread hijacking...

 

But I will say that with the exception of the theorists, who saw methods courses as a nuisance, people that hadn't taken differential and integral calculus before grad school came to regret it.

[AuldReekie]

So this is a bit of thread hijacking...

 

But I will say that with the exception of the theorists, who saw methods courses as a nuisance, people that hadn't taken differential and integral calculus before grad school came to regret it.

 

Feel for us British applicants then... due to the nature of our degrees there wasn't a single Political Science student that took a math major or course. In fact most of us wouldn't have been allowed to even if we'd wanted to as the rough equivalent of AP Math was a pre-requisite.

[cooperstreet]

So this is a bit of thread hijacking...

 

But I will say that with the exception of the theorists, who saw methods courses as a nuisance, people that hadn't taken differential and integral calculus before grad school came to regret it.

I second this. People in my cohort who are taking the math methods classes during the same semester as the social science research methods classes are having a much harder time. that being said, what is helpful is conceptually grasping calculus. No one has been asked (or will be asked) to integrate anything by hand.

[AmericanQuant]

I second this. People in my cohort who are taking the math methods classes during the same semester as the social science research methods classes are having a much harder time. that being said, what is helpful is conceptually grasping calculus. No one has been asked (or will be asked) to integrate anything by hand.

 

More thread hijacking...

 

Calculus was uses extensively in our first year program, in both our (required) stat methods and (not required) formal theory courses.  Differentiation was used to find maxima of MLE's, derive the information matrix, derive an optimal move in a game etc.  Integration to do expectations of random variables, derive conditional distributions etc.  There was also some very basic linear algebra: adding and multiplying matrices, inverting matrices, checking whether matrix was full rank, etc.

 

Calculus and linear algebra (and other topics) were taught in a math camp, so everyone was more or less brought up to speed, but that treatment definitely wasn't as good as having taken a full course in high school or college.