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URGENT: Calculus 3 vs. Intro to Excel
 

elh's picture
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 3:01am
syllabus_plot3d.jpg

This summer I can take either

Cal 3 (multivariable) intensively
or
"Intro to Spreadsheets" intensively

Cal 3 would be a killer for the summer

I feel that Excel might be more practical, but it's not exactly a financial modelling course

Any advice?

Tags:
whitecollarandsuspenders's picture

Depends what you wanna do my

IB
(Baboon, 145
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 3:41am

Depends what you wanna do my man. Most finance jobs don't need Calc III. If you wanna get into IBanking / Corp. Finance / Equity Research definitely go for the Excel course. I took a Basic Excel course, and found learning to model fairly easy because I knew Excel pretty well.

"The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money"

- Margaret Thatcher

RGE's picture

Calculus III. You can learn

IB
(Orangutan, 315
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 3:58am

Calculus III. You can learn Excel in a week. Books w/ exercises can be had for cheap on Amazon. Seriously Calc III is way more valuable intellectually.

mhurricane's picture

Any math class will enable

 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 4:13am

Any math class will enable you to think more critically and abstractly. However, you have to put forth the effort to LEARN and UNDERSTAND the material. If you just memorize the mechanics for a good grade, what was the point? May have taken some geography class and aced it.

The difference between successful people and others is largely a habit - a controlled habit of doing every task better, faster and more efficiently.

Funkfreed's picture

1. Can you get an A in Calc

(Baboon, 147
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 4:23am

1. Can you get an A in Calc 3?
2. What else are you doing the summer?
3. What area are you looking at after undergrad?

drexelalum11's picture

Obviously calc. Don't be

O
(Neanderthal, 3,635
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 6:03am

Obviously calc. Don't be stupid

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Boothorbust's picture

Calc is the clear choice -

O
(King Kong, 1,129
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 8:26am

Calc is the clear choice - don't waste a summer and tuition $ on Intro to Excel, you can teach that to yourself for free.

jktecon's picture

IDK if you aren't doing any

O
(Gorilla, 531
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 9:00am

IDK if you aren't doing any math beyond calc 3 then I'd actually say do the excel course. Calc III is definitely the most useless of the calculus series in terms of learning new/useful information. Partial derivatives you could easily teach yourself, lagrange multipliers and maximizing in more than one variable is self teachable also and most everything else is useless in everyone's(save an engineers) life.

Think you'll ever need to know how to calculate how much liquid can pass through an object, or how to do a triple integral to solve for the area of 1/4 sphere? Calc 3 is not a math course with any real critical thinking, it simply uses what you already know and takes it into functions of more than one variable. I also took differential equations while taking calc 3 so it isn't even necessary for that. Long story short, if you're not doing analysis on manifolds anytime soon this class is pretty useless.

The Man's picture

Hang on, what's your major?

(Monkey, 44
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 10:12am

Hang on, what's your major? Surely an econ or finance student at a decent school is required to take calc 3 at some point, right?

jktecon's picture

Surely? Economics is a social

O
(Gorilla, 531
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 10:30am

Surely? Economics is a social science, thus it is rare that an undergrad has to take multivariable calculus to graduate. Financial math is filled with so many highly theoretical results that it defeats the point of studying the subject at its basic level.

So I actually hope students aren't forced to learn the mathematical sides of these subjects, as they may never be able to separate theory from reality. And to answer your question no many (probably safe to say most) decent schools don't require calc III to graduate.

Boothorbust's picture

jktecon: Surely? Economics is

O
(King Kong, 1,129
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 11:39am
jktecon:

Surely? Economics is a social science, thus it is rare that an undergrad has to take multivariable calculus to graduate. Financial math is filled with so many highly theoretical results that it defeats the point of studying the subject at its basic level.

So I actually hope students aren't forced to learn the mathematical sides of these subjects, as they may never be able to separate theory from reality. And to answer your question no many (probably safe to say most) decent schools don't require calc III to graduate.

Where did you go to school?? At my school and all of my friends' that I can recall we were required to take Calc III for economics. You couldn't possibly take intermediate micro without knowing partial derivatives and multivariate optimization. Similarly for econometrics, you can't really learn OLS without understanding matrix math and other calc 2/3 topics. Econ may be a "social science" by classification, but any real econ work requires moderately heavy math.

lifeofpurpose's picture

jktecon: IDK if you aren't

(Gorilla, 523
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 11:46am
jktecon:

IDK if you aren't doing any math beyond calc 3 then I'd actually say do the excel course. Calc III is definitely the most useless of the calculus series in terms of learning new/useful information. Partial derivatives you could easily teach yourself, lagrange multipliers and maximizing in more than one variable is self teachable also and most everything else is useless in everyone's(save an engineers) life.

Think you'll ever need to know how to calculate how much liquid can pass through an object, or how to do a triple integral to solve for the area of 1/4 sphere? Calc 3 is not a math course with any real critical thinking, it simply uses what you already know and takes it into functions of more than one variable. I also took differential equations while taking calc 3 so it isn't even necessary for that. Long story short, if you're not doing analysis on manifolds anytime soon this class is pretty useless.

are you high or something? Calc 3 is the most important calculus course. It is used in statistics, game theory, economics, etc... The reason you take Calc 1 and 2 is so that you can finally take Calc 3.

jktecon's picture

NO kidding and most schools

O
(Gorilla, 531
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 11:53am

NO kidding and most schools don't require it. Look up even Harvard econ's required courses. Math in economics is a tool which in all actuality is not required to understand the subject. partial differentiation and optimization like I said are so damn easy to understand you could take max 2 weeks out of a course to explain it in full detail if it was so required. These are not new concepts, it's the same old concepts being presented so I would say you wasted a lot of time taking calc III if you only needed these two fairly simple concepts. Calc III is for engineers for the most part who need good understanding of flux and divergence, or calculations of 3d volumes and surface areas.

It is useful for mathematicians but at its undergraduate presentation most times the rigor isn't even there as much as Calc II. If OP wants to go to Econ grad school or study math in more depth then sure study Calc III, but the course will not be much in terms of useful applications.

jktecon's picture

lifeofpurpose: jktecon: IDK

O
(Gorilla, 531
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 11:54am
lifeofpurpose:
jktecon:

IDK if you aren't doing any math beyond calc 3 then I'd actually say do the excel course. Calc III is definitely the most useless of the calculus series in terms of learning new/useful information. Partial derivatives you could easily teach yourself, lagrange multipliers and maximizing in more than one variable is self teachable also and most everything else is useless in everyone's(save an engineers) life.

Think you'll ever need to know how to calculate how much liquid can pass through an object, or how to do a triple integral to solve for the area of 1/4 sphere? Calc 3 is not a math course with any real critical thinking, it simply uses what you already know and takes it into functions of more than one variable. I also took differential equations while taking calc 3 so it isn't even necessary for that. Long story short, if you're not doing analysis on manifolds anytime soon this class is pretty useless.

are you high or something? Calc 3 is the most important calculus course. It is used in statistics, game theory, economics, etc... The reason you take Calc 1 and 2 is so that you can finally take Calc 3.

HAHAHA

Thurnis Haley's picture

lifeofpurpose: jktecon: IDK

(Orangutan, 367
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 12:20pm
lifeofpurpose:
jktecon:

IDK if you aren't doing any math beyond calc 3 then I'd actually say do the excel course. Calc III is definitely the most useless of the calculus series in terms of learning new/useful information. Partial derivatives you could easily teach yourself, lagrange multipliers and maximizing in more than one variable is self teachable also and most everything else is useless in everyone's(save an engineers) life.

Think you'll ever need to know how to calculate how much liquid can pass through an object, or how to do a triple integral to solve for the area of 1/4 sphere? Calc 3 is not a math course with any real critical thinking, it simply uses what you already know and takes it into functions of more than one variable. I also took differential equations while taking calc 3 so it isn't even necessary for that. Long story short, if you're not doing analysis on manifolds anytime soon this class is pretty useless.

are you high or something? Calc 3 is the most important calculus course. It is used in statistics, game theory, economics, etc... The reason you take Calc 1 and 2 is so that you can finally take Calc 3.

Different schools treat calc 3 differently. Some schools combine multivariable and vector calc into Calc 3 and others split them into Calc 3 and 4. Maybe that's where the confusion lies here. Because the vector calculus portion of Calc 3 has been completely useless to me in all my years of college as a math major, although it is used extensively in physics. Multivariable calc (which is very very easy) is useful for probability/statistics, economics, etc. Vector calc is not.

lifeofpurpose's picture

Well I studied at two

(Gorilla, 523
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 2:47pm

Well I studied at two different universities. In the first we had just two calc courses, however we took multivariable in the second course (all engineers had calc at high school so the program was pretty dense). However, when i transferred to the second university, they considered those 2 courses as equivalent to three courses. I think the states follows the 3 course calculus curricula if I am not wrong since most people dont study calculus at high school.

thurnis is right though, the real use of calc 3 is the multivariable calc which is useful for many other disciplines. However if you covered that in calc 2 there is no need for calc 3.

professionalmonkey's picture

Both classes are useless.

PE
 
Points)
 on 5/31/12 at 5:53pm

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