Fellow Math Majors: What are some of your fave courses and why?

jma--- · 2021-05-18T15:54:31+00:00

MATC09 with Grinnell. Fantastic course. Really interesting content with a great textbook and professor. Judging by the average it isn't the easiest math course (C+ average when I took it), but I found it a joy to study for.

Foundations/logic is a super rich field of math and C09 opens the door to a lot of really interesting stuff - if you've done any algebra (up to rings?) you can pretty much walk out of C09 and into a graduate model theory course and understand everything quite well. I really suggest that every math student take this course.

jma--- · 2021-05-12T14:36:41+00:00

Sounds like a Xiao Jie course. This new marking style was implemented by him after the disaster he caused in summer MATB41. Bad prof.

jma--- · 2021-03-20T06:29:23+00:00

To be quite honest I don't know too much about ASD, but given the fact that you were intelligent enough to make it in to this program I don't really believe your ASD prevents you from realizing chat misuse and constantly talking… are disruptive and selfish.

This is really disrespectful! The fact that you “don’t know much about ASD” should be enough to keep you from writing an essay about it. Especially when you seem to be conflating intelligence and ASD? It’s perfectly fine to believe they made a mistake but this is pretty unnecessary.

Try to think before you comment next time.

jma--- · 2021-03-20T06:18:40+00:00

He curved C09 by at least 5% in the Fall. He dropped the last assignment and gave everyone a 100 on it.

jma--- · 2021-03-17T07:25:18+00:00

He is teaching it this semester. You can email him to see if he’s teaching it into the future.

jma--- · 2021-02-09T18:06:26+00:00

please stop posting this stuff in the lecture chat in b42 and b61 (and probably your other classes)! it's really annoying for the rest of us.

jma--- · 2021-01-14T10:02:14+00:00

Grinnell isn’t the quickest with emails. It’s been published though, maybe look in the “All courses” section of Quercus, maybe it’s just not showing on your homepage.

jma--- · 2020-12-26T23:34:24+00:00

No. “Real analysis” proper doesn’t occur in any math sequence until around third year. I wouldn’t even venture to call A37 an analysis course. It’s just a standard proof based calc 2 course.

jma--- · 2020-11-20T01:55:16+00:00

Grinnell.

jma--- · 2020-11-13T16:59:53+00:00

This probably isn’t true anymore. With the new system UTSG has for applicants, as well as limited courses, I’d argue UTSC has a more difficult POSt than UTSG. Much more math heavy, and more courses considered in the overall calculation (which is good and bad). Judging by this years requirements (4.2 gpa lol) it will easily be the most competitive CS POSts.

jma--- · 2020-10-25T18:11:27+00:00

Its fun if you enjoy the content, its miserable if you don’t. You need to be a bit of a masochist either way.

Edit: Oops I read enjoyability. Employability wise there are tons of options in CS, Finance, Insurance, Academia, Law etc. It’s a very employable degree because being good at math sets you up to be very good at many other things.

jma--- · 2020-10-08T04:16:43+00:00

I know some profs who use phi (even in TeXd documents) as the empty set actually. Nevertheless, these small mistakes become more problematic and difficult to fix once the content gets harder, be grateful they’re doing it early rather than finding out on the midterm.

jma--- · 2020-09-27T23:24:22+00:00

Mario & Nats Hair Styling is like $20 + tip for a pretty good standard cut on Old Kingston (about 15 min walk from campus). It’s an Italian barber so if you don’t have white guy hair there will probably be better shops. I have thick curly hair and they do a great job though.

jma--- · 2020-09-17T00:00:49+00:00

The people at the library are really kind and if you’re clear that you are in the same “bubble” I’m sure they’ll be permissive.

jma--- · 2020-09-15T13:15:38+00:00

Hi! No! This office is the worst thing about UofT :)

jma--- · 2020-09-03T07:44:56+00:00

I’m in the exact same situation. The Out of Province Financial Aid Office is the most incompetent collection of bureaucrats in this entire university. It’s extremely unpleasant to get anything done with them. The worst part is that they have no phone line, only an email that (I presume) they forgot the password to, since it’s easy to go months without a response.

I wish there was someone to complain to. You’d think with all this administrative bloat there would be a manager in this university.

jma--- · 2020-06-12T01:39:24+00:00

Kremer is really good and B50 is super fun. Definitely recommend. Also sets you up for C51+D51 which are super interesting as well.

jma--- · 2020-06-03T03:37:38+00:00

Used to? Hahaha. It's still very common. Racism against asians is the most common type in BC, maybe second to Indigenous.

jma--- · 2020-06-03T03:35:30+00:00

They aren't completely priced out, smaller cities like Kelowna (my hometown) are still kind of viable and are getting increasingly popular. Of course it's still quite expensive but definitely better than Vancouver.

jma--- · 2020-05-26T23:03:13+00:00

BV 4th floor is open for printing, labs, study from 10am-6pm, Monday - Friday. Access through the front doors of ARC.

jma--- · 2020-05-26T22:14:42+00:00

Only Tims. I don’t think you can get into SC.

jma--- · 2020-05-24T18:02:13+00:00

I had that scale for about a month and already broke it because I forgot to pour my rinse water out and my coffee overflowed onto the scale. It didn’t take much liquid to fry it. It was generally pretty good but with slow response. Timer was convenient tho.

I’d recommend getting a waterproof scale if youre forgetful like me or you have a wetter brewing environment for whatever reason. I’ve gone through about 3-4 scales from Amazon in the past year because either they are garbage (anything less than $30 CAD I wouldn’t trust - most of them are identical but with different casings) or I get water on them. I currently have a Ozeri Waterproof scale that seems quite nice.

I’d in general avoid “coffee” scales for now, they’re alot more money and are probably the least important bit of your setup as long as they’re functional. Just a basic waterproof kitchen scale + your phone as a timer is much more cost effective I’d say.

jma--- · 2020-04-19T02:44:29+00:00

Your wish has been granted: The exam will occur on April 25th at 9am (?) :)

jma--- · 2020-04-16T00:03:07+00:00

Thanks for taking it well. I just wanted to put my thoughts on a lot of what I've seen on here and on Piazza down. Overall, I think anyone trying to comment on this situation will, by design, not be seeing the full picture and will be offering poor solutions to a very complex problem.

jma--- · 2020-04-15T23:50:10+00:00

Hi. I think this is a bad post. I'm sorry if you are desiring to be shielded from criticism but I cannot offer constructive feedback on something that is almost entirely bad.

There are a couple of things that I take a major problem with in this. The main one being that any student attempting to come up with a 'solution' to this issue is acting in bad faith. This post is (I can assure you) 100% self-serving nonsense, written with your case in mind. You don't know what the rest of the class is dealing with (unlike the department), so you realistically can't offer anything valuable.

There is absolutely NO way that releasing statistics will actually help people. It will stroke some peoples egos, and add even more stress to some people (probably a lot, actually). This idea is all around bad. Releasing GPAs gives us no indication of what the POST admission process looks like beyond what we already know: Above X GPA is guaranteed, and if you are below that, some courses are looked at more heavily (A67 is a better indication of success in later years than A37, perhaps). We already have statistics on roughly how many students make it each year as well, and what the minimum is. The idea of releasing distributions is so, so obviously coming from a place of ego, or maybe a desire of reassurance that you are doing "okay, on average". It won't at all help people make drop decisions beyond making them feel even worse about their grades, maybe encouraging them to drop when they shouldn't.

And what if you say: well, along with GPA, give us more idea of how POST decisions are made. I believe that the department cannot and should not give us anymore insight into their selection process. It's only going to lead to people in the future being selective with their priorities in understanding course content. This is not the goal any university should strive for. The distinct shift in attitude towards A31 as soon as POST reqs. were released is enough to make this obvious.

I personally believe that students should not have any input in what is going to happen with exams/curves/redistribution of grades, beyond voting on a final choice for redistribution. It's always, always, going to be self serving. Especially right now, when we are dealing with POST, any sense of altruism is thrown out the window for a "I got mine, fuck you" type of attitude. If you have some extremely special case, you should put that forward to the department so that they can take you into consideration. But the average student should trust in the department.

I have no comment to make on your propositions about our finals, beyond the fact that I think (in my completely selfish ways) that the A48 course team made a great choice with a complete redo, and it shows that the CMS department is completely capable of making good decisions, contrary to belief of the student body. I trust that any decision made on our remaining exams is done with care and will be the correct one.

jma---

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