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Pure vs. Applied Mathematics. (1 Viewer)

Your preference.

  • Pure

    Votes: 37 60.7%
  • Applied

    Votes: 24 39.3%

  • Total voters
    61

humphdogg

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Exphate said:
Analysis is next semester. Will have some sort of opinion by then.
do they even have analysis courses at UoW? i thought all the maths courses there were pretty applied.
 

Slidey

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humphdogg said:
do they even have analysis courses at UoW? i thought all the maths courses there were pretty applied.
Of course they have analysis. Ever university with a maths department has analysis courses. lol.
 

humphdogg

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Slidey said:
Of course they have analysis. Ever university with a maths department has analysis courses. lol.
no srsly, i looked up their maths courses offered at UoW and i couldn't see any analysis courses. a lot of unis don't offer analysis because only pure maths geeks do it.
 

§eraphim

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I like Applied Mathematics because we can get some intuition from real-world problems. It really complements applied areas, ie, physics, engineering, some commerce majors like finance and actuarial studies.

The most interesting courses I did were applied: stochastic modelling, and also solving PDEs numerically (finite difference) and analytically (integral transforms, asymptotic expansions, etc). If I had to go back, I would have done more courses with physical applications, such as oceanography and atmospheric modelling, fluid dynamics, etc.
 

Iruka

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§eraphim said:
I like Applied Mathematics because we can get some intuition from real-world problems. It really complements applied areas, ie, physics, engineering, some commerce majors like finance and actuarial studies.

The most interesting courses I did were applied: stochastic modelling, and also solving PDEs numerically (finite difference) and analytically (integral transforms, asymptotic expansions, etc). If I had to go back, I would have done more courses with physical applications, such as oceanography and atmospheric modelling, fluid dynamics, etc.
I agree with you about doing more applied maths.

It seems to me that the teaching of applied at UNSW in the first 2 years of the degree is distinctly unimpresive and this turns a lot of people off doing it in third year - I know many people who have decided never to touch applied again after doing DEs. (And that hideous dose of vector calc that they give you in HSVC.)

It is a pity because UNSW actually offers quite alot of interesting stuff in applied at the graduate level.

I wonder what applied is like at other unis?
 

darkliight

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3unitz said:
omg guys bought a book on analysis <3

im gonna vote for pure :D
Which book? I bought Rudin's a while ago, and it's great, but I was wondering what else was out there and good.
 

cutemouse

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Applied Mathematics would be more useful in life (eg. for Engineering).

I guess it's like learning the piano. Most people learn Classical piano first, and then move onto Jazz or whatever styles they want and play/improvise songs.

We have a maths teacher at school, who comes from an engineering background. He put the repeater sign on top of a recurring decimal after about 5 sig numbers later, whereas you usually would put it on the first number.

He also writes that 0.9 repeater equals 1, which isn't actually really true, as it approaches 1 (0.9 repeated --> 1).
 

darkliight

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So .. you didn't read the link? Or you're trolling.

Just in case you're not, or don't get the link, what is your 0.000...1 number divided by 10? If it's the same number (ie, you just get back 0.000...1 again), and I don't see how you could come to any other conclusion, then I guess you just invented a fancy (but unhelpful) way to write "0" (it's the only number that can be divided by 10 to give itself). In which case, 0.999... + 0.000...1 = 0.999... + 0 = 0.999... = 1.

Read the link given, it has plenty of simple proofs of the statement.
 

Templar

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jm01 said:
Then what is 0.999... + 0.1?
1.1, or 1.0999...

What is 0.000...1? If we do allow the use of infinite zeroes before the one (which is technically invalid), we obtain it as (lim n->inf (1/10)^n), which is zero.
 

lolokay

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so (1-0.99...)/(1-0.99...) is undefined (ie. is 0/0)?

+ it seems to me that the pure/applied distinction seems to only be relevant to university study - to tell you whether the course is related to the applications or not

would it probably be best to take mainly pure courses first, and then applied later on? (not that I need to think about this for a few years)
 

Forbidden.

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lolokay said:
so (1-0.99...)/(1-0.99...) is undefined (ie. is 0/0)?

+ it seems to me that the pure/applied distinction seems to only be relevant to university study - to tell you whether the course is related to the applications or not

would it probably be best to take mainly pure courses first, and then applied later on? (not that I need to think about this for a few years)
Indeterminate form, l'Hopital to the rescue?
i.e if f(x)/g(x) is in the indeterminate form 0/0 or infinity/infinity, then you seek f'(x)/g'(x) and so on until you get a limit?
 

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