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 Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 8:25 am
Hey. First off hi I'm Joe, nice to be here.
Well I'm doing a degree at the moment and I'm thinking about my 3rd-year choices. I have to submit them by tomorrow, so this is more of a panic post than anything xd and I'm wondering if any of u can offer me some advice.
I'm dong Maths w/ Computer Science, so I have to do one computer sci course and 3 maths courses each term. There are alot of maths courses to choose from, starting with the first term. I have 3 of these to choose from:
Financial Mathematics
Financial Portfolio Analysis
Probability Models
Linear Statistical Models
Scattered Data Modelling
Measure & Integration
Numerical Linear Algebra
Methods of Applied Mathematics
Complex Analysis
Wavelets and Data Compression
Groups & Rings
Introduction to Mathematical Biology
... and at the moment I'm trying to narrow down to 3 from Intro to Mathematical Biology, Wavelets & Data Compression, Financial Mathematics, Financial Portfolio Analysis, Probability Models, Complex Analysis and Measure & Integration.
I want to do at least one financial unit, one science/technical unit, and one more pure mathematical unit. Complex analysis seems like a good candidate for a challenge, not sure how it's gonna help the value of my degree though.
Have any of you done courses similar to this? Were you thrown any curve balls? Advice/help?
Thanks xxx
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Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 6:19 pm
Hi Joe! Welcome to the physics and math guild. I'm currently disillusioned with both of these fields right now, but I'll try not to let that get in the way of my answer.
Umm...this is a really hard question to answer without knowing which specific fields in math and computers you wanna go into. Complex analysis is really interesting and pretty central to math, as is measure and integration, though measure theory can be hard. Both of these fields are really pure, though. I wouldn't really recommend either of them unless you were interested in the material itself or its applications (of which there are few). I really didn't like either of these classes.
If you wanna do lots of fundamental computer science - codes, data transfer, things like that - you'll probably end up taking algebra (groups & rings) eventually. Along that line, numerical linear algebra is ridiculously useful in a wide array of modeling contexts, and an overview course on applied math is always recommended. But for the computer stuff, if you're already interested in wavelets and data compression you might as well go for it.
Is the probability models class done from a theoretical or application-based standpoint? If it's applications-based and you plan on doing computer modeling at any point, this is another class you'll have to take eventually. I haven't taken a probability class, so I can't say whether or not it's fun or interesting, though.
Mathematical biology is an up-and-coming field (that I know nothing about) so it could be really exciting. I have no idea what finance is like. Kind of morally against the field.
Hope this helps at all; hope you get this in time. Good luck!
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Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 4:16 am
Thank you for your help Swordmaster, it's appreciated.
I'm doing CompSci as my minor so my final choices are:
Autumn
Limits of Computation
Linear Statistical Models
Measure & Integrtion
Complex Analysis
Spring/Summer
Neural Networks
Medical Statistics
Functional Analysis
Partial Differential Equations
Measure & Integration is required to take Functional Analysis in the Spring term, so I'm happy to do those two. I've missed out on the financial units I was hoping to do but I've opted for a kinda half-pure-math degree with the other half taken by things like neural networks and medical statistics which, I'm hoping, will prove more interesting.
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Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 12:48 am
Neural nets are really cool, although they take forever to train. Simple but powerful and a great example of emergent behavior.
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