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What class in college did you get the most out of?

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Re: What class in college did you get the most out of?

#11

Post by rms »

nostrademons wrote: post #10
far33d wrote: post #7

Operating Systems. And if you have a chance to TA, do it. You learn a lot more by teaching than you do by being taught.

I'd also recommend the other two of the "big three" computer science electives - Compiler Design, and Computer Graphics. You can skip most of the rest of the CS major, but no matter how good a programmer you think you are, you'll get something out of those 3 courses. And I'll second the bit about TAing, though my experience was in physics rather than CS. Being a physics lab TA is cool...you get to play with all sorts…

My school, the University of Pittsburgh, somehow tricked the accreditation board into thinking that our physics computer labs (where we solved problems that were typed into Excel) were equivalent to an actual physics lab.

Re: What class in college did you get the most out of?

#12

Post by axiom »

Most useful: Linear algebra, Numerical methods, Stats and probability

Most interesting: Control systems, Abstract algebra, Real analysis, Complex analysis

Of course my definition of "useful" is not necessarily yours. I'm much more on the research side of things, and having a solid mathematical foundation is absolutely essential there. My advice for taking courses in college: take courses that you know will be useful, but you will not have the time to teach to yourself. If you're a true nerd you will learn all the really useful stuff on your own anyway, and you don't need university for that.

Re: What class in college did you get the most out of?

#13

Post by far33d »

rms wrote: post #9
far33d wrote: post #7

Operating Systems. And if you have a chance to TA, do it. You learn a lot more by teaching than you do by being taught.

I'm curious how many credits your OS course was. I have friends at CMU and OS is a 12 credit class. You build a Unix-like kernel from scratch with a partner. An "A" in OS guarantees a six figure programming job at graduation.

It was 1.5. The lab was .5 credit (a class a credit where I went). It was, as far as I know, the only class in the whole university where the lab was a separately credited part.

Organic Chem - 1 credit.

OS - 1.5

Re: What class in college did you get the most out of?

#14

Post by far33d »

nostrademons wrote: post #10
far33d wrote: post #7

Operating Systems. And if you have a chance to TA, do it. You learn a lot more by teaching than you do by being taught.

I'd also recommend the other two of the "big three" computer science electives - Compiler Design, and Computer Graphics. You can skip most of the rest of the CS major, but no matter how good a programmer you think you are, you'll get something out of those 3 courses. And I'll second the bit about TAing, though my experience was in physics rather than CS. Being a physics lab TA is cool...you get to play with all sorts…

I was a graphics geek in college... you could skip it, but you'd be skipping some really fun code.

But OS... if you don't know that stuff you're basically worthless.

Re: What class in college did you get the most out of?

#15

Post by rickcecil »

wyday wrote: post #5

Linearity: You need a friendly helpful teacher for this one. The class comes in use when you need to solve multiple iterations of a particular calculation. For instance, triangulation is a cinch now that I've taken Linearity. English literature: It's fun to read the classics and compare them to how politicians and blogs cherry pick and bastardize quotes.

But, I would say, you have to take it with the right teacher...someone who pushes you to find your own understanding of the literature. This usually doesn't happen until the 300 and 400 level courses.

Re: What class in college did you get the most out of?

#16

Post by nostrademons »

I had a bunch of courses that I really liked in college:

Tonal Harmony and Counterpoint, aka "Harmonize this melody in 4-part harmony" - where you find that there are intricate rules to music, and what you hear on the radio is the result of centuries of evolution in what's considered "acceptable" music. (Or, if you listen to punk rock, the result of breaking nearly every rule for kicks.)

Intro Geology, aka "Rocks for Jocks" (it's funny though; the English-major jocks always struggled in this class, while us one or two physics majors were like "pish, this is easy") - where you play with lots of rocks and go on lots of field trips. I found it surprisingly interesting.

Sustainable Agriculture, aka "This hippy bio professor got a grant for teaching enviro-friendly stuff" - where you learn that there is shit in the meat, and we're all gonna starve when the oil runs out.

Also really liked my philosophy courses, General Relativity, Game Theory, and perhaps Mathematical Logic (though I found that one really hard).

Re: What class in college did you get the most out of?

#17

Post by aswanson »

nostrademons wrote: post #10
far33d wrote: post #7

Operating Systems. And if you have a chance to TA, do it. You learn a lot more by teaching than you do by being taught.

I'd also recommend the other two of the "big three" computer science electives - Compiler Design, and Computer Graphics. You can skip most of the rest of the CS major, but no matter how good a programmer you think you are, you'll get something out of those 3 courses. And I'll second the bit about TAing, though my experience was in physics rather than CS. Being a physics lab TA is cool...you get to play with all sorts…

Is Statistical Mechanics worth learning?

Re: What class in college did you get the most out of?

#18

Post by ericb »

I took a class titled "Entrepreneurship" when I was in college about 10 years ago. Every other week a different entrepreneur spoke. The founder of Jolt Cola came in and told us "we love water [as a market]--it comes out of the tap, and you can sell it for a dollar a bottle." He also showed us one of their big-sellers: Americola--sold ONLY in Japan, with a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the can. That was the moment I realized how twisted marketing can be.

Re: What class in college did you get the most out of?

#19

Post by nostrademons »

aswanson wrote: post #17
nostrademons wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also recommend the other two of the "big three" computer science electives - Compiler Design, and Computer Graphics. You can skip most of the rest of the CS major, but no matter how good a programmer you think you are, you'll get something out of those 3 courses. And I'll second the bit about TAing, though my experience was in physics rather than CS. Being a physics lab TA is cool...you get to play with all sorts…

Is Statistical Mechanics worth learning?

It was wrapped up together with Waves, Optics, and Thermal Physics at my college (and then I think they redid the curriculum the year after I passed through and pulled it out). The parts that I saw definitely seemed worth learning - you learn that pop-science concepts like entropy and temperature actually have precise mathematical definitions in terms of the states of the individual particles. You also learn a bunch of nifty mathematical tricks for dealing with Really Big Numbers.

Actually, I'd probably recommend it more for someone planning to go into finance, economics or history (!!) rather than someone going into physics or CS, unless you're going into a subfield directly related to stat mech. Most of my physics coursework has been basically useless for my computer programming; yeah, it's nifty to know your vectors and rotation matrices (particularly if you go into graphics), but I've never had to solve a volume integral or contract a tensor since dropping my physics major.

Re: What class in college did you get the most out of?

#20

Post by Goladus »

If I had one recommendation, it would be to keep practicing any math you learn while in college. If you're like me, you basically had math classes every semester from when you were 6 years old until the end of college, and you take for granted how much you will be able to forget in 5 years without practice.

The classes I got the most out of aren't the ones I'd necessarily recommend. Whether I got a lot out of a class depended on lot on what the rest of my schedule looked like at the time (besides variables like professor and class makeup). If I was taking 12 credits, I'd tend to get a lot out of all of them. If I was taking 18 plus being a treasurer of a singing group and planning a trip to Europe, I wouldn't learn as much.

Sometimes, I'd get a lot of knowledge out of a class, but the perspective and wisdom wouldn't come until later. I learned how to write a fugue in '18th century counterpoint.' Like the Zelda one on this page:

http://www.goladus.com/music/musicpage.php

But it wasn't until I'd been out of college a few years that I figured out how to write a coherent piece that was longer than a minute or so (not counting fugues, which I could still write if I wanted to).

Here's some more: http://www.myspace.com/gadolus

As you can see I really have no idea how to promote music. That might be something I'd recommend a music major learn about.

Others, like Theory of Computation, I loved but because I didn't find any use for it in the first few years after college, I forgot a lot. I still get the basic concepts of nondeterminism and context-free grammars and such, but I'm having to basically relearn all the useful stuff.

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