Maths after college

I've just finished my A levels in maths and further maths (OCR) and am planning to study biology and chemistry at uni. I will miss maths. Does anybody know the most efficient way to keep studying maths outside of a degree course? I will probably sit in on lectures at uni when I can, but still want to do a bit extra. I like learning new topics but unsure of the best way to do this? any help appreciated

Reply 1

MindMax2000

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by Ben259

I'm looking to do something similar, since the degrees that I am looking into just focuses on the sciences (even though there's a fair amount of maths in them).

At the moment, I have considered looking at the books they used in math degrees, and then get second hand copies of those books to study myself without doing a degree in it. I find the content in MMath degrees would provide more comprehensive coverage than looking through a BSc + MSc content.

The other options would be to look up YouTube videos on how to cover math content by yourself. The following are by Maths Socerer who offer such opinions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTnEG_WGd2Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=didXE0HkSC8
The annoying thing is that these videos follow an American math degree syllabus, which isn't directly convertible over to the British syllabus.
After doing some research, we should be roughly around Calculus 2 level in terms of content, but you would want to check yourself.

A series of books that I am keen on looking into include the Schaum's Outline series. Again, this follows the American syllabus, so you would want to check the contents of these books to avoid repeating material that you have already covered. Having said that, these books contain all the answers (but won't show you how to arrive at the answers) in each book - something a lot of uni level maths textbooks won't have, irrespective of which side of the Atlantic the publisher is based.

Another syllabus that you can look into is the one for Chicago maths students: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm

Personally, I would rather look at the MMath content for British degrees than the American ones. Having said that, the American books can be a good reference and a good read (got a few from the Schaum's Outline series - cheaper and easier to read than a number of British maths textbooks at degree level).