Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
WRT "weed-out course": does this hold over time? If what some posters here have mentioned is true- that high school is far too easy (I remember being shown a scatter plot of "high school math grades" vs. "Calc 1 grades" in a pointless university class a while ago; there was no correlation)- we should expect to see the exams from 1960 be easier computationally than they are in 2020. Is that the case?
Because the university was bad at naming a course that should have just been called "advanced principles of algebra"? The fundamental theory behind calculus is relatively easy to understand to the point that even today's grade school calculus courses cover it in its entirety; there's very little to expand upon after that. And all the other courses are generally just applications of calculus, taught by people that know those applications, and by that point you're out of the academic hazing ritual anyway, so...
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