maths in tcd...

Flup

just wondering why the points for mathematics have dropped so low this year at 395. Is this a reflection of how unpopular the course is?? Or am I reading into It too much?? Would be grateful if someone could shed some light on this.

Karlusss

All points are a reflection on the popularity of the course. That said, I think last year's JFs had it pretty bad. Something about a Russian lecturer and a class average below a pass mark or something.

Podge_irl

The points for Maths are never that high, I really wouldn't worry about it at all. Its a difficult and specialist subject which not a massive number of people are interested in. I wouldn't worry about the above either, you're going to get a horrific lecturer (or more) in any course at some point.

EyesLeft

In my day, around the turn of the century, the number of places in maths was increased and it was said at the time that this was to try and keep the points between 400-420 so as to avoid excluding students who are bad at languages. Given most technical courses slipped last year, it is easy to see that tcd maths might have fallen out of its intended range, but 5 pts isn't much and what is true is that it is far and away the best department in the country.

Jonathan

Karlusss wrote: »

Something about a Russian lecturer

Few lecturers are not russian in that department.

Podge_irl

jmccrohan wrote: »

Few lecturers are not russian in that department.

A lot of them are Eastern European as opposed to just Russian, but yes there is a lot of them (especially in the applied maths side).

PurpleFistMixer

We heard horror stories of a very high fail rate in one of the modules last year, but I think they got on to the lecturer so hopefully he's not going to be so hard this year...
Though, I'm not sure how well known that'd be outside of Trinity, so I doubt it'd affect incoming students (ie I didn't know anything about it when I was doing my course-picking last year).

Podge_irl

PurpleFistMixer wrote: »

We heard horror stories of a very high fail rate in one of the modules last year, but I think they got on to the lecturer so hopefully he's not going to be so hard this year...

Was it Mechanics? Cause that has a massive failure rate every single year (30/36 Maths students failed it in my year, though nearly all TPs passed).

dan719

If your referring to Ma 113 Linear Algebra, yes there was a high failure rate, but still a lot of high grades.

PurpleFistMixer

I heard horror stories about both Mechanics and Linear Algebra actually, though opinions vary wildly depending on who you talk to. I personally love Linear Algebra, so I hope the exam isn't too horrible... And hurray, that's good about TPs passing Mechanics. : p

dan719

Well I didn't do Mechanics last year but I do know that last years Ma113 results for christmas were 39 firsts and 4 fails, with everyone else in between. For Easter I think it was 13 firsts and 24 fails with everyone else in between. It does get a lot harder once ranks of spaces comes into it.....

scruttocks

last year's linear algebra with Dotsenko pushed me out of TSM maths into BESS, best decision I ever made.

PurpleFistMixer

But he's a legend! We had to do a "review" thing of sorts and write comments about him, and my friend just wrote an identity matrix with "Great" instead of 1s. It was pure genius, really.

Mendoza2909

I'm not part of that class but I was there when all the first years were complaining to Donal O' Donovan about Dotsenko. Pretty funny, the argument was something like "I didn't do any work, but even if I did I don't know how I could pass, that course is so hard". You could see Donal was trying not to laugh.

cookiemonst3r

Haha who said that?? Ya Vlad was horrific...a good lot of ppl had to sit the supps...Mech could have bn a lot worse but for the fact Schnir decided to have homework q's on the exam...we all just learned off the answers which isn't good at all in the long run...

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

I think I've missed something... how come it's still listed at 450 points on the CAO website? Were there further offers after round 2?

Morbert

Flup wrote: »

just wondering why the points for mathematics have dropped so low this year at 395. Is this a reflection of how unpopular the course is?? Or am I reading into It too much?? Would be grateful if someone could shed some light on this.

I can't get my head around Trinity's maths department. It seems more like a Theoretical Physics department in disguise. The result is great TP modules and support, but a limited choice of pure mathematics modules.

If you really really love pure maths then you should consider other universities. I can only speak for NUI Maynooth, but they love their maths, and have a good range of modules. It's a good place to go if you want to put a +500 leaving cert to good use (It was 510 last year, according to the CAO).

rjt

Morbert wrote: »

I can't get my head around Trinity's maths department. It seems more like a Theoretical Physics department in disguise. The result is great TP modules and support, but a limited choice of pure mathematics modules.

Want to elaborate? 2nd year here, and yet to do any TP courses (and I certainly won't need to, there's plenty of choice for the next two years).

Podge_irl

Morbert wrote: »

I can't get my head around Trinity's maths department. It seems more like a Theoretical Physics department in disguise. The result is great TP modules and support, but a limited choice of pure mathematics modules.

Reminds me of a discussion I had with two of my friends the other night. The maths department in Trinity is certainly more inclined towards the theoretical physics side of things than the maths side of things at the moment. Its not so much that they are a TP dept in disguise but rather the funding doesn't exist for both so they somewhat yo-yo between Maths and TP depending on the head of the department. The head was a string theorist until this year so he hired mostly string theorists, whereas now its a pure maths person so it may head in the other direction. You are certainly right about the good TP modules and lack of choice in the Maths modules though - the perfect scenario would be both but its hard to see that happening.

Mendoza2909

3rd year maths, enjoying it, never had a to do a fully TP course. Maybe Conor Houghton's methods course last year was the closest, but there was a lot of maths in there and it was very well thought. Definitely theres a lot of choice in 3rd and 4th year if you want to do just pure maths courses. Got a D in physics in the leaving so I would have been out at the first sign of that TP nonsense!

Morbert

Mendoza2909 wrote: »

3rd year maths, enjoying it, never had a to do a fully TP course. Maybe Conor Houghton's methods course last year was the closest, but there was a lot of maths in there and it was very well thought. Definitely theres a lot of choice in 3rd and 4th year if you want to do just pure maths courses. Got a D in physics in the leaving so I would have been out at the first sign of that TP nonsense!

A maths degree from trinity is not a bad thing. It's just that, while you can do pure maths in Trinity without taking a TP course if you're careful, you will not have a large choice of pure mathematics modules.

There are plenty of topics in Mathematics that deserve their own modules; topics such as Galois Theory, Manifolds, Number Theory, Riemann Surfaces, etc. These subjects are either not taught at all in Trinity, or are dealt with as part of another module (such as General Relativity or K-Theory).

So if Trinity offers pure mathematics modules that you are interested in, then that's fine. But I would still say the current department offers considerably fewer pure maths modules than other departments.

Peleus

ugh pure maths.

Mendoza2909

Peleus wrote: »

ugh pure maths.

To be fair, I'm not a complete nerd, I also enjoy crosswords and multiplying big numbers in my head.

Zoodlebop

And chess. Don't forget the chess.......

Mendoza2909

Zoodlebop wrote: »

And chess. Don't forget the chess.......

Oh yeah... chess... thanks for reminding me mister bop!