Warwick Maths Chat

I'd have to warn you, if you're thinking of taking discrete, that you'll either love it or hate it. I liked it and it was one of my best modules, but I've known several people (including one person who was clearly very intelligent and who did very well in other modules) who found it very difficult and they ended up dropping it. So if you do take discrete, it's worth taking other optional modules to bring your number of cats to above 120. That way, if you don't like it, you'll be able to afford to drop it.

is it a dell studio 15? I have one with same spec and I love it!

Thanks - it's great to hear advice of people who've done/suffered these courses already

At A Level, I loved the "decision" modules and particularly the basic propositional calculus stuff - so introduction to symbolic logic would be great, but like every other optional mod I wanted to take it's in term 2!
So that brought me to consider discrete in term 1 as an "unusual."

Did you do discrete 1 and 2?

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Okay, 3 things:

1) I forgot to upload a photo. ****. Literally just remembered it. wat do?

2) I added the 30 CAT version of French I instead of the 24. I saw nothing telling me the difference, but I might be blind. Does this need to be changed?

3) French doesn't appear on my timetable. How do I find out when it is?

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upload it ASAP i'd geuss
also, in the check list it says 2 passport photos (im thinking they might use these for the ID if you forgot to upload online too, can't think what else they could be used for)

I think it's to do with the accomodation. I just did the thing at asda where you can get 5 of them printed for £5

...

I'm a total beginner, the spec says:

"Level:
This module is offered to students with no prior knowledge of French."

so I assume I'm taking the right one. I don't fancy the "beginner accelerated" one, I doubt I'll be good enough to jump ahead that quickly.

Note that you may only take one language module (whether as an Unusual Option or from List B) for credit in each year. These modules may carry 24 or 30 CATS and that is the credit you get. But, where a language module is offered at a choice of 24 or 30 CATS, you MUST choose the 24 CATS version.

Discrete 1 is made up of two halves. The first half is mostly propositional calculus, and it includes things like laws of logic, as well as a lot of set theory. This is all done in a very formal way, establishing things from first principles. You may find that a lot of the material in this module overlaps with things you learn in introduction to symbolic logic. You say that discrete 1 will be an unusual option for you. So what degree course are you doing? You may also be doing the module foundations, and a lot of material in disrete overlaps with with some material from foundations, although it's covered in more detail in discrete.

In the second half of disrete 1, you learn about summations. What this involves is where you build on what you have learnt about sums of arithmetic and geometric series, as well about sums of x squared. You then learn techniques to find sums of more complicated series. to do this material, it would probably help if you are very comfortable with how the formulae you already know are derived and proved, since you would need to use similar techniques to get formulae for more complicated things.

I did do disrete 2 as well. In this module, you learn about binomials (n choose r etc) and about how you can manipulate them and sum them. This part can be very hard. Another major part is graph theory. This builds on what you have learned in decision at A-level. Here, you learn various theorems about graphs. For example, you would have learned that a graph is Eulerian if every node has an even number of edges coming from it. At university, you would prove this and other similar things.

Personally, I didn't find graph theory to be my favorite part of the module, so in the exam, I was able to avoid the graph theory questions, since you are supposed to only answer some of the questions (a bit like in STEP). A big part of discrete 2 is learning algorithms, particularly sorting algorithms. You would also learn about how fast these algorithms run.

I didn't do introduction to symbolic logic, but apparently for students doing maths, it can be very easy. So from what you've said, I think this would be a good module for you.

I mean, as far as, you've written words, they're in the right order, but I would think they are, maybe not, the correct ones (like in MORSE lectures).

it is actually very unimpressive.

i5-430m (underpowered)
ati 5165
500gb hdd
and 15.6' screen. That's all that is worth noting.
oh and 4gb RAM

not too bad for well under 600

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Yeah, I've sorted out my modules I think. Time to start packing. Is there anything important but easily forgettable that you guys can think of?

Yeah, I've sorted out my modules I think. Time to start packing. Is there anything important but easily forgettable that you guys can think of?

I'm a bit worried that a lot of people are going to take discrete just because of my post. I did really enjoy it and it was one of my highest scoring modules, however please do bear in mind that many people find it really hard (probably because the type of thinking required is a bit different) so make sure you have a backup plan so if you don't like it, you can replace it with another module.