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Math 1A03 vs Math 1LS3

 
Old 06-24-2017 at 12:08 PM   #1
scrambledeggs
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Math 1A03 vs Math 1LS3
Hello! I'm planning my first year courses and need one of these courses. I know there's already some forums about these but they're kind of old.
My Questions:
Basically, what's the difference? I feel like 1A03 would be easy for me since I took AP calc. in highschool and we basically covered all of the topics that were mentioned. But I don't know which one would be more helpful for any future life science courses I take. Also, what are the professors like, and the course load? Any info would be helpful.

Thanks
Old 06-24-2017 at 05:58 PM   #2
Imperious
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Simply put: 1LS3 if you just want the credit, 1A03 if you plan on doing any other math courses in the future. These math courses won't help you with any life science courses you take so it really does not matter whether you take the life science math or the pure math. And since the physics courses here are not calculus based your choice of math course is really insignificant. If you do end up taking Math 1LS3, that's not to say that you can't do any further math courses. It's just that lots of the topics covered in Math 1A03 do come back in future math courses, many of which are not taught in either 1LS3+1LT3, which is why it's strongly recommended to take 1A03 if you know you will take more math courses.

1LS3 is kind of like a review of regular high school math. They start off with review of what functions are, how to graph functions (not fun), domain and range, slope, derivatives, simple differential equations, and a bit on the really simple integration. The testing style is full response so you can get part-marks for trying.

The first quarter of 1A03 is mostly about differentiation, then the other three quarters is about integrals, all the different methods of integration, and applications with integrals.

Workload: 1LS3 is pretty light stuff. I think you have like 4 midterms or something and you get like a million different marking schemes and the prof gives you the highest mark using all marking schemes. This is literally just due to the fact that they want people to pass the course because a lot of life science people actually can't do math.
1A03 shouldn't be a problem if you've done AP math. The tests and exam is multiple choice. Though if you actually know your stuff, it shouldn't really make a difference. There are online assignments about every two weeks. They're usually a bit harder than the textbook questions or special cases of the homework questions, you type in your answer, you have 3 tries to get it right. You can collaborate with other students if you need help. It's usually the same type of question for everyone but with different numbers. You can also collaborate with engineer students as Math 1A03/1AA3/1B03 is equivalent to their 1ZA3/1ZB3/1ZC3 as in you have the same tests, assignments and exams and cover the same material in class. It's just a different course code, that's all. There's also some lab assignments with those regular assignments where you're just using Maple to do numerical analyses of the concepts you've learned in class.

Profs: All profs for 1LS3 are good from what I've heard. For 1A03, you just want to avoid any profs whose names sound Chinese because their English is usually really bad to the point where you actually don't know what they're talking about and their boardwork usually ends up making no sense. I think Dr. Valeriote is teaching 1A03 this fall. I've had him for a third year course that was kinda proof heavy and he's really not good at explaining abstract stuff. But I'm sure he can teach the first year course no problem as it's not super theoretical anyways and he's taught the Arts&Science calculus for a few years now which is pretty much the same. And he most likely won't be in charge of making any tests, assignments, etc. as it's usually the course coordinator (Chris Maclean) who does all this stuff. Valeriote will solely be doing teaching.

Edit: Also, I don't know if you took AP Calc AB or BC but Calc BC covers all of Math 1A03 and about 80% of Math 1AA3 so Math 1AA3 could be a pretty bird elective for you.

Last edited by Imperious : 06-24-2017 at 06:46 PM.



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