[spoiler]And what's up with using WebAssign?[/spoiler]

>>6106

apparently us ees/cpes are supposed to take a diffeq class that's customized to the ee curriculum, but it honestly sounds like a retarded system. I'm not a big math fan but it's damn useful to know, so I'm baffled at the low math literacy expectations set by NCSU. Then again, the curriculum

>>6113
That class is definitely not as informative as the math department one
all engineers should take MA 405/Intro to Linear Algebra.
Also the advanced calculus classes and graduate ODEs
Both within reach of an undergrad engineer and would boost understanding quite a bit

>>6117
Do you mean MA 511 Advanced Calculus I?
That class looks hard
I'm planning to take it but I'm halfway not looking forward to it
>MA 225 prerequisite
By far my favorite class and an excellent class for logical deduction

Not sure when the statistics course will come in handy. . .

>>6118
435, 426, 511, and 512 could all be considered advanced calculus
although most engineers don't meet prereqs for 425/426

i advise you all to stay away from ST 515. professor has a statistics phd and allegedly worked for NASA, but had never heard of the error function

Engineers tend not to use very much math more advanced than Calculus. If you need the skills for that sort of math, you'd much rather consult a mathematician/physicist/someone who works with numbers for a living. It's not really in the mind of engineers to tangle with more math than necessary. It's simply a better use of time to apply the other skills engineers have instead of dabbling with numbers and such.

>>6105
>At least a splash of linear algebra would do some good
csc majors gotta take lin alg. a whole lot of good that's doing though. the linear algebra teacher this semester is complete and utter garbage.

talks a lot but says very little

>>6135
is it a CSC course code or MA course?
Sometimes I'm really split on whether we should make people take more math, because I feel like everyone already has a taste; that means the people that like it will take more classes in it and the everyone else will stay very far away

>>6120
>515
Why are engineers even going there? I've never been certain what engineers need statistics for beyond the very basics. In industry won't there usually be a statistician who all the way knows what they're doing? Why train engineers to halfway know what they're doing? A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing, especially in statistics where it's so easy to botch assumptions and interpretations. I think the 370/371-372 are good for engineers to get a basic handle so they can communicate with a statistician, but I don't think 515 is a necessary thing (for undergrads at least, it may get more necessary/applicable in higher degrees).
This is coming from a stats major working on a master's in statistics now. I always imagine there to not be that much variability to study in physical fields like engineering. Bio E and Biomed, sure since there's abundant human variation and sure ISE because quality control is heavily statistical, but I don't see what a MechE or Aero needs experimental statistics for. I probably just have a poor understanding of what it is they do.

Also, you say error function but post Cauchy. From what I can glean from Wikipedia (top source, I know), it doesn't seem deserving of a name as it seems to just be talking about the normality of errors and seems quite separate from the Cauchy distribution.

>>6146 I put cauchy cuz its my favorite distribution, and was actually unrelated to the error function X_X...
taking 515 cuz it was on the list of suggested classes outside of N.E. dept. ill be (hopefully) using statistics cuz ill be doing moar experimental work in the coming semesters/career
this pic is actually related, and error function (erf) is also used as a closed form of the CDF of the normal distribution

>>6148
Experimental work is absolute goals, so I understand the feeling. The error function as closed form CDF makes good sense. Whole lot easier with those parameters. If you've decided you like the mathematical side, 501 and 502 are a great time.
Thanks for the information about the erf, though, I hadn't heard of it before, either.

>>6150
im taking MA 580 and ST 516 next semester. hopefully they are gud

>>6140
ma305, but 50 of the 100 seats are reserved for csc

>>6159
580 with who?
Kelley is the best, gremaud is good, alen is very difficult.

>>6231
Ilse Ipsen i guess

>>6233
Ipsen wrote one of the good books, don't know about her teaching

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~ctk/Notes_580/Intro.pdf

page 39:
"But Tim, how do I know I’m in command of the
prerequisites?"

I’m here to help, so . . .
I’m giving a 50 point test on them very soon.
This test counts for real.
Most of you will do very, very well and start off right.
Some of you will find that you need to review a few things."

hopefully this doesnt carry over into her class too =@

The best MA professors: Kelley, Kaltofen, Gremaud, Lin, Martin

>>6240
I wasn't that big a fan of Kaltofen. He was cooky and amusing, but I didn't feel like he was an especially good prof.
For anyone who will be taking a class with him, though, be sure to pay attention to the random tidbits that he talks about,
they will often be on the exam as a proxy measurement for whether or not you paid attention in/attended class.

>>6241
I found Kaltofen to be extremely knowledgeable about his field and if you nudge him away from his storytelling you'll learn a lot.
Also doesn't like to give tests or cumulative finals.
I took Computer Algebra with him. It was 3 homeworks, a paper, and a presentation; stress free semester just learning about computer algebra.

>>6248
I had him for Linear Algebra. I did definitely get that he was very knowledgeable, but my class was never very invested in taking him away from tangents since it wasn't actually people who were excited about it :/

>>6259 currently have putcha for lin alg. such a bad class. my only solace is knowing the class is almost over

>>6282
he's one of the easy classes for that sweet checkmark on your requirements
enjoy those classes when they come

>>6284 im a engineery student, and made the mistake of taking it after seeing it on the suggested courses section of the department handbook.
also they cancelled the MA 580 class today and now the only option is the online version `_`....waiiiiiiiiii?

How do I generate a list of all pythagorean triples?
I can fix a hypotenuse and then try all pairs of a, b which satisfy a + b < hypotenuse (triangle inequality) but that's still a lot of work
oh, and those pairs have to satisfy a*a + b*b = c*c for abc to be right, which is pretty important for (a,b,c) to be a pythagorean triple

I'll whip something up in Perl this weeknd python candy-asses BTFO

>>6347
here's a simple fibbonaci generator for pythagorean triples

;;generate nth fibbonaci number
(defun fib (n)
(check-type n (integer 0 *))
(do ((i n (1- i))
(f1 0 f2)
(f2 1 (+ f1 f2)))
((= i 0) f1)))


;;a more general way to generate a pythagorean triple
(defun triple (n)
(check-type n (integer 0 *))
(format t "~a ~a ~a"
(* 2 (fib (+ n 1)) (fib (+ n 2)))
(* (fib n) (fib (+ n 3)))
(+ (* 2 (fib (+ n 1)) (fib (+ n 2))) (* (fib n) (fib n)))
)
)

hmm
spacing is fucked

>>6355
That doesn't look like a loop at all, which makes me think that
wait a second
>fibbonaci generator for pythagorean triples
what does this mean

This is vaguely math related
"Detecting boring colors"
Because every shade of gray is close to something like #FFFFFF or #000000 or #F0F0F0 (repeating pairs of two bytes), you can improver out boring grays and blacks and whites by just calculating the distance a color (like #6598cb) has to being a shade of gray
Since hex colors are just of the form #RRGGBB where 'R' // the 'R's are bytes representing red, 'G' for green and so on, you can split the color into RGB components

In the example, we get
R: #65 (hex) -> 101 (base-10)
G: #98 (hex) -> 152 (base-10)
B: #cb (hex) -> 203 (base-10)
Then I call RG^2 the square difference between R and G squared: RG^2 = abs(R^2 - G^2)
And GB^2 is the square difference in the same manner: GB^2 = abs(G^2 - B^2)

So RG^2 = 12903 and GB^2 = 18105; I've found that unsaturated colors have RG < 70 and GB < 70
RG and GB are not really "color distances" since those are just the euclidean distance between colors but they are definitely useful metrics to make life more exciting!

>>6364
(triple n)
returns a string containing a pythagorean triple for positive integers n
you can make a loop to generate an arbitrary number of pythagorean triples, although I don't think it'll exhaustively generate every pythagorean triple

Hey math friends bail me out of this
It's been bothering me for days

The premise is a horse race:
There are 10 horses in stalls at the starting line. The stall for horse #1 opens first. After 1 second, the stall for horse #2 is opened, and so on until the stall for horse #10 is opened on the 9th second of the race

It takes the horses 5 seconds to reach the finish line once their stall has been opened. How long does the race take?

>>6529
I think I figured this out but I'll be polite and post the solution some time later so you have some time to work on it if you'd like~

>>6529
Where did you get that problem? I'm curious about what sort of class/other thing it would come from
I can also give what I think the answers are, and in similar spirit to >>6530 I'll spoiler them.
[Spoiler]
1. 14 seconds
2. (n-1) + 5
3. (n-1) + t
B1. d*(n-1) + t [/Spoiler]
If anyone wants to tell me I'm dumb/wrong, that's okay but hopefully I did it right.

>>6624 i think you are smart/right

>>6624
This is right

The idea stemmed from some animation work I was doing; will post an example in a bit when I have access to my computer.
If you're looking for a class that offers things like this, PHI210 "Representation, Reason, & Reality" which is a class about elementary logic and some fun puzzles
The highlights include:
1. Introduction to symbolic logic
2. Applying logic to qualify statements
--- e.g. "Invert the statement: I will not go to the theater if it is raining tomorrow"
3. The barber problem (subtitled "not your dad's introduction to set theory")
4. Cantor's notions of un/countable sets and some proofs of the un/countability of common sets (Z, R, Q, etc.)
5. The trolley problem

A very fun class overall, esp. if you're looking to knock out a humanity / additional breadth for undergraduate

Here's where the problem stems from
When you click on something, it triggers the animation which sends away all the other text except the thing you clicked on

Either way, the problem was lots of fun!