Good universities for pure maths?

I really want to study maths at university, however I've noticed that the majority of courses have a large aspects of statistics. I've never been able to get my head around stats and I prefer pure maths and mechanics. Can anyone point me to some courses with fewer modules of stats? (I don't mind one or two per year). Thanks in advance!

Reply 1

ttoby

Original post by LeftyGuitarist

Just to get an idea of what level of university you'd be looking at, what subjects are you taking and what are your predicted grades?

Edit: Also, since there is some overlap between statistics and other areas of maths, what are the main areas of stats that you don't like?

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 2

LeftyGuitarist

I've done maths, geography, chemistry and physics at AS (my school weren't offering further maths) and I'm planning on dropping chemistry at A2.

My main issue with stats is probability, but it took me most of the year to understand standard deviation etc.

Reply 3

Atheism

Can't you self teach at least AS further maths? It will make getting into a good university for maths much more likely

Reply 4

uniphysics

Physics/Maths with Physics has a lot of pure and mechanics and only a tiny bit of statistics. Humanity subjects tend to have the most statistics, although economics does have a fair bit of calculus too

Reply 5

ttoby

Original post by LeftyGuitarist

Not having further maths would limit you a bit when it comes to the top universities, although since your school doesn't offer it then you would have a good excuse if they ask why you haven't taken it. Ask your school to mention in the reference that they don't offer further maths.

With regards to probability, understanding the general concepts involved with things like P(A and B), P(A or B) etc is very fundamental to university maths. You can't get away from studying the general concepts of boolean algebra. However since you'll have covered that sort of stuff before then that will be helpful for you.

If it's answering questions like 'what is the probability that two particular people are standing next to each other for a photograph' that you don't like, then you might want to avoid modules relating to combinatorics and discrete mathematics.

Concepts like expectation and variance do crop up in some other modules - the best way to avoid these is to avoid modules mentioning statistics and randomness in their names.

The universities to consider will depend on your predicted grades, especially your maths predicted grades, so it would be necessary to know these in order to look for suitable possibilities. I wouldn't want to recommend somewhere that you would struggle to get into, or somewhere too far down the league tables. If you haven't received an official set of predicted grades yet then just a rough idea of how you think you'll do would be useful.

Reply 6

Raiden10

Original post by LeftyGuitarist

Pure maths (and applied maths!) at university is very different. Which is why some people find they don't like it. Most A-levels is not called "pure" at uni,

The most important A-level module is definitely FP1. Also any modules (usually FP3) that contain Group Theory (tremendously important) are useful but almost non-existent these days.

Proof by induction, matrices and complex numbers. Those are a crucial starting point for everybody but especially towards what people call "pure" maths.

Reply 7

Noble.

Original post by Raiden10

No A-level modules are what I'd call pure mathematics. The different level of thinking required in pure is so fundamentally different from the way the small bits of pure are approached at A-Level it's not even worth considering any A-Level module as remotely helpful for pure.

Physics?

Original post by Noble.

I wouldn't go that far. From what I remember, FP1 induction proofs provide a good introduction to pure maths because they're a lot stricter on how everything is set out. When it comes to those topics that are covered in a more rigorous sense at university, the a-level knowledge does help because it allows you to picture what's going on and make leaps where necessary.

Reply 10

Raiden10

Original post by Noble.

Okay I agree largely, but perhaps a better way to say something about those topics is that the basic properties of matrices, complex numbers, and the number systems is a familiarity with their basic properties.

Whilst A-levels are not pure mathematics at university level, the things I mentioned above are helpful for pure/sets-and-functions/university mathematicals and A-levels do provide some help with that.

The number systems from A-level, especially FP1, matrices provide a fertile ground of examples that are great for illustrating the more modern Cantorian view of mathematics that you find at university.