Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
There is absolutely no point in studying advanced mathematics for a humanities or social science major unless he or she has a desire to study that subject.
Many distributional requirements exist only to bolster sagging departments.
I'm an ardent supporter of the "Open Curriculum" outside of one's major, and related cognate courses.
What? Social sciences rely heavily on math once you get beyond simple intro courses. How do you think research gets published?
Depends on the school you attend. I am a Science major at CC for now, will be a Natural Resources major/Environmental Science major - overall the school I was looking to transfer to has Stat courses relevant to Wildlife type surveys and things of that nature rather than just basic statistical methods, which I think I'd do well in since I actually care about it. My concentration will most likely be Fish/Wildlife Research or Conservation.
After talking to a decent amount of people in the field most have said they've never used anything from Calc class, that isn't to say it is pointless, but I don't see WHY they make you take it for things like this. Math stresses me out to the core, but I guess you just gotta get passed it.
There are still 200 level courses that are not easy an if you go on and into 300 & 400 level courses for a bachelor's degree, there will be more. I wouldn't know which courses are and aren't but these are bound to be ones that weed out the students who are not right for the program due to the work load.
Quote:
Originally Posted by slim04
If you think that all pharmacists do is take large bulk packages of drugs and put them into little bottles, yeah I agree to some extent. But they often handle very powerful drugs that can kill people if not taken correctly, at the right dose, or mixed with certain other drugs. They also deal with controlled substances like human growth hormones, steroids, narcotics, adderall, etc.
I think I'd prefer someone that is educated, licensed, and has a background in pharmacology and chemistry handing that than the guy stocking shampoo.
There are also different levels. Obviously if you are clerk you wont be mixing drugs, you'll be handing them off and taking orders and really don't need the advance math at all. However if you are the mixer, you may. I am not saying you need a year/year and a half of calculus but you'll need to know how much you mix in and the other known drugs said customer uses (which isn't easy if they use multiple pharmacies like my parents using delivery services as well as brick and mortar pharmacies.)
Chances are, once you're in the workplace you're probably not going to use a lot of the math you learned. A lot of it is going to be baked into the software that you use. In practice, you're going to enter a few numbers into a program and it's going to spit out some other numbers. However. I think that it's important that knowledge workers have an intuitive understanding of *how* those numbers were generated. It gives you a better chance of realizing if there's an error somewhere. It also provides you with the knowledge to figure out how to adapt your plug-and-chug numbers if the built-in software analysis doesn't exactly apply to your situation.
Knowledge work isn't just about simply generating one set of numbers from another set of numbers. It's about interpreting the data, and an intuitive understanding of the underlying math helps you do that.
Went to visit my family for the weekend and saw my sister, a Pharm.D. major, doing her Calculus II homework. What direct bearing does Calculus II have on her ability to be a good pharmacist?
It immediately brought back bitter memories and fired me up. Once upon a time, I was turned off by a CS major because I'm lousy at Calculus. Likewise to pharmacy, what direct bearing does Calculus have on my ability to read and write code?
Just looking for opinions on this issue. I feel that these courses are a big waste of student's time and money towards the pursuit of their major.
An understanding if the rates at which the body uses medications would come in handy for a pharmacist and, as has already been pointed out, calculus teaches you to think logically. I would like my pharmacist to both have an understanding of rates of change and be able to think logically. That way she can question when dosing mistakes are made.
When dd was a baby, she had to be put on an anti viral medication that had never been tested on infants. I went to the pharmacy to get the script filled only to have the pharmacist ring alarm bells. After two hours of discussion between the pharmacist, several doctors and the manufacturer, they settled on a different dose for her. The original dose was deemed too high for a baby.
And nothing you take in college is a waste of time. Every class you take trains your brain to think in different ways and that is good.
Calculus II is not some kind of advanced math. Even an average college freshman can figure it out.
Entry-level advanced math classes are proof rigorous abstract algebra,real analysis and topology. Partial differential equation can be pretty advanced too.
Chances are, once you're in the workplace you're probably not going to use a lot of the math you learned. A lot of it is going to be baked into the software that you use. In practice, you're going to enter a few numbers into a program and it's going to spit out some other numbers. However. I think that it's important that knowledge workers have an intuitive understanding of *how* those numbers were generated. It gives you a better chance of realizing if there's an error somewhere. It also provides you with the knowledge to figure out how to adapt your plug-and-chug numbers if the built-in software analysis doesn't exactly apply to your situation.
Knowledge work isn't just about simply generating one set of numbers from another set of numbers. It's about interpreting the data, and an intuitive understanding of the underlying math helps you do that.
In my experience with (bucket) biology, it seems more common to just hire someone to do the math. If you do not have the funding, you do it yourself.
Using a computer program to plug and chug is not good enough. You need to have a solid idea of what is going on even though you are not doing it with pencil and paper. Besides, most programs are just souped up hand-held calculators.
You are correct though, knowing what is going with the math gives you a general idea of what the answer could look like.
Calculus II is not some kind of advanced math. Even an average college freshman can figure it out.
Entry-level advanced math classes are proof rigorous abstract algebra,real analysis and topology. Partial differential equation can be pretty advanced too.
I disagree. I am actually pretty competant at doing algebra with all As in those classes. Brief calculus though was like speaking Japanese to me. I could not understand it the first time I had it. A few months later, I was fine at it (wasn't great but wasn't too bad.)
There are also different levels. Obviously if you are clerk you wont be mixing drugs, you'll be handing them off and taking orders and really don't need the advance math at all. However if you are the mixer, you may. I am not saying you need a year/year and a half of calculus but you'll need to know how much you mix in and the other known drugs said customer uses (which isn't easy if they use multiple pharmacies like my parents using delivery services as well as brick and mortar pharmacies.)
Wasn't arguing about advanced math, as I have no idea. I was arguing against your thought that pharmacy degrees perhaps weren't necessary or having professional pharmacists. Also, my reference to mixing drugs wasn't about creating new capsules from different drugs, it was noticing possible adverse interactions from medication from different doctors that may not be communicating. It's happened to me several times and I suspect many pharmacists have saved lives because of it.
To me that's worth having pharmacists with education and licensing requirements vs. just clerks dispensing prepackaged bottles.
Went to visit my family for the weekend and saw my sister, a Pharm.D. major, doing her Calculus II homework. What direct bearing does Calculus II have on her ability to be a good pharmacist?
It immediately brought back bitter memories and fired me up. Once upon a time, I was turned off by a CS major because I'm lousy at Calculus. Likewise to pharmacy, what direct bearing does Calculus have on my ability to read and write code?
Just looking for opinions on this issue. I feel that these courses are a big waste of student's time and money towards the pursuit of their major.
Math helps people think better. My profs told me from day 1 on campus, "we're not here to teach you WHAT to think but HOW to think." Math is exercise for the brain. It's like taking a stock car and souping it up so it can function with fluidity and power, in ANY situation. Like taking a couch potato and molding him into Michael Jordan or Bo Jackson, in their prime.
Calculus is required for ALL science and engineering majors in the world.
You cannot call yourself a scientist/engineer if you don't even know calculus, which is really pretty basic "advanced mathematics".
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Math stresses me out to the core, but I guess you just gotta get passed it.
