The Student Room Group

Maths Lectures

I don't know about others on here, but throughout my GCSE and A-Levels i pretty much taught myself everything i needed for the exams. I ended up with an A at GCSE and A-Level for Maths. How much do lectures play a part in doing well in your first year at Uni doing Maths? I find it much easier to learn by myself, because i pick up things very slowly ( i think ) compared to most other people, so i need to go through things at least 4-5 times before i understand it properly.

Is it possible to do the majority of the work on your own, without having to attend EVERY single lecture and come out with top marks?

P.S. I'm attending Loughborough University.
Reply 1
The lecturer is able to get information across in a way that books can't. Ie, waving hands around, pointing at things, etc. Also, they'll probably set the exam. Many times I've seen "I don't know why people didn't get this question as we did an example on it in lectures" in exam reports.

I don't know what the Loughborough course is like but I think it would be a pretty big task to teach yourself your degree as it's a lot(!) more than A level.
I recommend you go to them. And you may not get everything first go. But few people do.
Exactly. If you find things hard to pick up, how will doing it by yourself rather than going to lectures and then working through things yourself be any better? They ask for an A at A Level and kind of expect people to have that knowlegde at least, you'd be a fool not to go to them.
Reply 3
I taught myself A2 Maths and AS+A2 Further Maths but would definitely recommend going to lectures. You should go to lectures, make notes and then review things that you don't understand rather than assume you won't understand, don't go to lectures and try to do it all in your own time. If you bear in mind you'll probably have 20+ hours of lectures you'll realise they are definitely there for a reason.
Reply 4
Gaz031
I taught myself A2 Maths and AS+A2 Further Maths but would definitely recommend going to lectures. You should go to lectures, make notes and then review things that you don't understand rather than assume you won't understand, don't go to lectures and try to do it all in your own time. If you bear in mind you'll probably have 20+ hours of lectures you'll realise they are definitely there for a reason.


how are the lectures? There's definitely not 20+ hours of lectures at a Swedish university and the lecturers aren't there to explain things, but rather just go thru the information and that's it. Is it similar at a top UK university or are concepts explained at least once?
Reply 5
We had about 10 hours of lectures a week. Obviously that varies from university to university. It's pretty much like having a text book read to you but with more explanation for the tricky bits. So they tell you the definitions, theorems and give the odd example while waving their hands and drawing pretty pictures.
And note taking is not like in most other subjects. It's pretty much "you write what they write".
Reply 6
SsEe
We had about 10 hours of lectures a week. Obviously that varies from university to university. It's pretty much like having a text book read to you but with more explanation for the tricky bits. So they tell you the definitions, theorems and give the odd example while waving their hands and drawing pretty pictures.
And note taking is not like in most other subjects. It's pretty much "you write what they write".


thank you! and I find that last part pretty nice! :p:
Reply 7
Rickard.N
how are the lectures? There's definitely not 20+ hours of lectures at a Swedish university and the lecturers aren't there to explain things, but rather just go thru the information and that's it. Is it similar at a top UK university or are concepts explained at least once?


If you read the fresher's pack on the Imperial maths dept website, it says that you'll spend about 20 hours in lectures and tutorials, and they expect another 20 hours of independent work. This is, however, from memory, as I can't seem to access the site at the moment....
SsEe
We had about 10 hours of lectures a week. Obviously that varies from university to university. It's pretty much like having a text book read to you but with more explanation for the tricky bits. So they tell you the definitions, theorems and give the odd example while waving their hands and drawing pretty pictures.
And note taking is not like in most other subjects. It's pretty much "you write what they write".


Yeah I agree with that for Loughborough too, so missing 10 hours a week won't exactly help. I suppose, like SsEe said about just writing what the lecturer does, this does help with missing lectures as you can easily get the notes from another source, if that's what you want to do...

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