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Taximes

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Deusfaux

its totally doable, entirely dependent on how hard you're willing to work at it.

I'd aim for getting in done before the missed days, rather than catching up after.

Taximes

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Deusfaux

regular meetings outside of lecture with the professor would be advisable. keep them fully abreast of the situation

enlightenedbum

I would agree it's very doable, as I say in most learning math threads, depends how you learn. If you don't need lecture to learn math, it should be really simple. I would agree that you should get the work done ahead of time.

More specifically, Differential Equations is a weird class in that it is (at least for me) the most pure memorization topic in math. It's not entirely like most of the rest of Calculus where it builds and builds and eventually you end up at a cool result, it's more a lot of "hey, here's a situation and here's the technique you use for this situation."

It's not really a hard class, it's just less of a pure math class and more math for engineers/scientists which I gather you are. So you should be fine.

Spoit

It's probably doable, but if you're an EE (like the circuits class you mentioned), I'd make doubly sure you learn it since it's fundamental for a lot of engineering stuff

Technicality

With a good textbook and copies of any exercises for the week it should be pretty doable. I'll second what Spoilt said about it being important though. All the people on my EE course who scraped through the maths went on to fail Analog in the second year, as it was taken for granted that everything from the maths side was now second nature.

nuclearalchemist

I would just take your book with you and make sure to go over the same stuff while you are on vacation. Try to get the work done beforehand, as well. For EE courses, circuits etc, you really really REALLY want to be good at differential equations. Luckily, it doesn't sound like its going to be the part of the course that requires computer interactions, vector maps, etc, or even if you do that through differential equations.

FunkyWaltDogg

enlightenedbum wrote: »

More specifically, Differential Equations is a weird class in that it is (at least for me) the most pure memorization topic in math. It's not entirely like most of the rest of Calculus where it builds and builds and eventually you end up at a cool result, it's more a lot of "hey, here's a situation and here's the technique you use for this situation."

It's not really a hard class, it's just less of a pure math class and more math for engineers/scientists which I gather you are. So you should be fine.

I agree with this assessment entirely. Differential Equations is just a huge bag of tricks. Depending on your learning style, this could make it easier or harder for you, I guess.

BlochWave

Oh well I thought you'd be missing the whole course, which while still doable is...odd

Those short summer semester courses are packed, you do most of the real learning at home anyways

Depending on the ideas of the teacher, you'll probably be well into solving differential equations by then, and probably just learning new techniques, so you won't miss anything fundamental

I personally thought my ordinary differential equations class was among the easiest math classes I took(relatively of course, in an absolute sense obviously it was up there as it required knowledge of calculus), and presuming a passing knowledge of calculus, is intuitive and straight forward in general, I'd say

Hell, so are PDEs, but the difficulty there comes from a LOT of work going into a single problem.


EDIT: to expand on the above comments about it being a bag of tricks, it's not like some people accuse physics of being with senseless random formulas, everything you do you'll understand pretty well and it will make good mathematical sense. The thing is it's not the type of stuff you can come up with on your own. When you start seeing EQUATIONS and their whole solutions named after a single person, it's a safe bet that guy, by and large, came up with the whole solution after no one else in all of history could, so it's not the type of thing you can be like "well I kinda know how to do it so maybe I can stumble onto the solution"

Fortunately it's the easiest class to retain skills from. My textbook had a summary of the most common ODEs and how to solve them on the inside cover. After taking the class, that was sufficient for my ODE needs throughout the rest of college!

grungebox

Intro Diff EQ, especially the first few chapters covered in the class, is not a hard subject to teach yourself if you read carefully. My roommate was lazy and never went to class and still managed an A. YMMV.

What does Circuits II cover? Better yet, what did Circuits I stop at? RLC circuits? Did you cover phasors yet? Diff EQ is not as important for most basic circuits classes as you'd think, even though it's often listed as a pre or corequisite. Hell, here at my graduate institution it's not even required for the undergrads unless you go down the analog electronics or control specialty. Diff EQ is only needed for RLC circuits and feedback circuits, as far as basic circuits classes are concerned. Obviously it's important for later subjects, but that's not the issue here.

Taximes

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