Why maths at Warwick?

HCD

This is why! :p:

I got lectured by Prof Stewart for 2 weeks, t'was good fun.

Reply 21

estel

I still haven't seen him yet :frown:

Reply 22

HCD

16

The Orientalist

I got lectured by Prof Stewart for 2 weeks, t'was good fun.

I'll bet it was! :p:

Reply 23

Yes, i've just been to a load of lectures by ian stewart, in modelling natures nonlinearity. I like his books, they're pretty good, flatterland was quite enjoyable!

Reply 24

The Orientalist

I got lectured by Prof Stewart for 2 weeks, t'was good fun.

Did you go to todays lecture? I missed it, apparently someone said there was videos and it was really good or something??

Reply 25

The Orientalist

England Captain

Did you go to todays lecture? I missed it, apparently someone said there was videos and it was really good or something??

Yeah it was ****ing hilarious! We started a new chapter and Dave showed us some videos of the different types of locomotion of different animals: so we had a horse (classic), a pig, a bison and a flippin lama! A troting lama is one of the funniest things you'll see in your life, I was almost in tears.

Reply 26

estel

Dave does the lectures... does he do them with Prof. Stewart, or are they written by him? :s

Reply 27

Dave wood lectures the module, but he went on jury duty for a couple of weeks, so ian took over from him.

Reply 28

JohnnySPal

2

Ahh I remember the good old days of MNN last year. I was in a pretty empty Ramphal for that lecture :smile:

. At any point has he said that he really needs to rewrite all his OHP slides? He was saying that all the time to us, and I bet he still didn't get around to it, again.

You'll not be so pleased when you see the second assessment, if mine was anything to go by :p:

. I was so stressed with that bad-boy it was ridiculous, especially after having four April exams on top of it. But, contrary to what I believed in the first term, Dave was right about the poster project; it was one of the most enjoyable pieces of work I did all year (after we got an article to write about, that is).

Now if you want the best lecturer in the whole of Warwick next year, do Functional Analysis I, brought to you by the author of the Intro to ODEs book, Mr. James Cooper Robinson. What. A. Guy.

Reply 29

Johnsonion

Ahh I remember the good old days of MNN last year. I was in a pretty empty Ramphal for that lecture :smile:

. At any point has he said that he really needs to rewrite all his OHP slides? He was saying that all the time to us, and I bet he still didn't get around to it, again.

You'll not be so pleased when you see the second assessment, if mine was anything to go by :p:

. I was so stressed with that bad-boy it was ridiculous, especially after having four April exams on top of it. But, contrary to what I believed in the first term, Dave was right about the poster project; it was one of the most enjoyable pieces of work I did all year (after we got an article to write about, that is).

Now if you want the best lecturer in the whole of Warwick next year, do Functional Analysis I, brought to you by the author of the Intro to ODEs book, Mr. James Cooper Robinson. What. A. Guy.

Cheers, i'll keep that in mind! Are there any other good modules that are worth doing? Are there any that are worth avoiding?

Reply 30

JohnnySPal

2

There's no major advice that really comes to mind.

These are all the Maths course I know of that have had a lecture in MS.01, so you could call them the "biggies". I can recommend all to varying degrees:

HoM - Jeremy Gray is a good lecturer, but even so there's the odd pretty bloody dull lecture. Depends on whether you can be arsed to write three essays. They may sound like diddlers but you do have to work for it.

Topology - Colin Rourke (who always lectures it) can get his point across really well and gets good audience participation going, but your written notes might not be great. It's an interesting module when you can get your head around it.

Measure Theory - if lecturered by Cabreras, might be best avoided. I sat it anyway and he did get much better (so were he to lecture it again next year the course might be a lot better). It's a very love it/hate it course, just try it. I'll stick up for it though given I like the material

Complex Analysis - Thus far, a pile of piss. He's still not covered anything new, and spends half the lectures writing exercises on the boards that could just be whacked on a handout. He's far too quiet and writes far too small. The course is pissing a lot of people off, I believe, but it seems easy. Reminds me of Vector Analysis (with Jochen) last year, except for the amusing lecturer. Certainly, he's not left a great impression.

Knot Theory - An American guy took over the course for this year (whether it will return to the long-standing lecturer next year is anyone's guess), and he is pretty bloody good. He gets a tad confusing at times, but again there's some interesting material; he's enthusiastic, midly amusing and explains most things well, and again he get splenty of audience participation going.

As for other courses, Topics of Math Bio is probably best avoided if it's Kirklionis again (he's a nice enough guy, but a pretty poor lecturer that set absolutely no exercises or anything), FAI is an AMAZING module, QToODEs is a decent module but I must confess to not following a significant proportion of it at the time, Fractal Geometry is sort of annoying me (you'd think it's be great, especially with Anthony Manning, but it's really pretty boring at times), Galois Theory is pretty interesting and I'm taking it despite the fact that it looks hard, and FAII... Hm. It's not FAI, put it that way.

Reply 31

wow, cheers for all the advice, much appreciated!

Reply 32

ILIGAN

9

The Orientalist

What course did you study as an exchange student? And where did you live?

Operations Management and I stayed at Benefactors before I finally move out and transferred to a flat in Coventry with some friends I met in the university. There were also 2 students from Wharton Business School who took courses at WBS during that time. I have no idea if the program has continued but I was told that Wharton is a partner school of Warwick B-School.

Reply 33

The Orientalist

ILIGAN

Operations Management and I stayed at Benefactors before I finally move out and transferred to a flat in Coventry with some friends I met in the university. There were also 2 students from Wharton Business School who took courses at WBS during that time. I have no idea if the program has continued but I was told that Wharton is a partner school of Warwick B-School.

I lived just next to Benefactors last year: in Cryfield. Yeah Warwick still has its partnership with Wharton business school I believe. Although what everyone is talking about right now is its partnership with the University of Tokyo: many students here want to go to Japan for their year abroad.

Reply 34

SmokeyB

ILIGAN

I really heard Warwick is such a reputable school. I spend several months there as an exchange student and I chose it over LSE. But frankly, when we talk about reputation and brand name recognition outside of the UK, Oxford brand is a leading brand. Warwick, though an excellent uni, still does not equal to Oxford in this area. But I sincerely hope that someday it could head-to-head with Oxford in terms of global reputation so that my American friends and classmates wouldn't keep asking me, "where is that?" everytime I say, I spent monhs there as an exchaneg student. You know what I mean...

ILIGAN I think what you are missing is that we are talking about maths reputation. I seriously don't think you will find a professional mathematician in the US who would say "War-Wick where is that?" Although they will of course also know where "Arks-Fard" is too. Warwick has been a power house for maths research since Zeeman founded the department there with all the people he spirited away from Cambridge. The rest of the University of Warwick has been trying to catch up since the sixties, with some success.

Of course Oxford has better brand recognition, they have been working at it since the 1200s. It was one of the few universities that was established before the Pilgrim Fathers set off.

If you want to be a mathematician you have to look carefully at Warwick and Oxford. Their relative strengths and weaknesses and the differences in the courses. You have to think where will suit you and where you will do best. Also the entry requirements are different. For example you can get in to Oxford with out passing STEP, and the specific entry requirements differ by college.

If you are concerned about giving a good first impression with your "resume" (CV) when applying for jobs in North America. Sure, choose Oxford hands down.

Reply 35

IrrationalNumber

12

Inflation

Yes people would rather go Oxford than Warwick, who wouldn't?

Me, and I can't be the only one. There's a lot of pressure at Oxford because of the shorter terms (not saying that Warwick maths doesn't have pressure... just that I wouldn't be surprised if it's not quite as intense as Oxford's)
The STEP exam is a much harder test than the Oxford entrance paper... and so it wouldn't surprise me if a fair few students at Warwick were stronger than those at Oxford. Of course, Oxford does have a brilliant reputation that isn't necessarily carried through by Warwick, but certainly, in terms of the course, the amount of freedom you get with your choices at Warwick is second to none in the UK.

(I just realized the date of this thread....)

Reply 36

Krush

IrrationalNumber

it wouldn't surprise me if a fair few students at Warwick were stronger than those at Oxford.

Indeed if I remember correctly the average A-Level Tariff scores of mathematics students in 2006, Cambridge came top with 560 points followed by Warwick and Oxford which both have an average of 533 points (followed by Imperial with 498 points and then LSE with 495 points). Hence the calibre of maths students at Warwick and Oxford is very similar.

Reply 37

Aksan

11

Don't forget all of the Cambridge rejects/people who miss their STEP offer. =P I would've applied to Oxford if I could've but I wanted Cambridge more.

Reply 38

Totally Tom

Aksan

Don't forget all of the Cambridge rejects/people who miss their STEP offer. =P I would've applied to Oxford if I could've but I wanted Cambridge more.

We need a rejects club :yep:

Reply 39

estel