| As Antiquark said, the analytic track is much more proof intensive. If you absolutely hate proofs, you probably shouldn't take it. But Ma 1a, in my opinion is not representative of the difficulty of Ma 1b and 1c analytic. Ma 1b and 2c move at a slightly slower pace. If you've had exposure to even a little bit of linear algebra (by that I mean, you know what a matrix and a determinant are and what Gaussian elimination is), the analytic track for Ma 1b is probably better. The analytical track as a whole isn't directly useful for ME, but it teaches you to think in a unique way, which is one of the reasons I came to Caltech. The analytic tracks definitely do not take less time though. My roommate is in prac math and he takes much less time on his sets than I do, and I would say that our mathematical abilities are about equal (we had around the same amount of math in high school, etc.). You have to be quite good at proofs to be able to an analytic set faster than a prac set.
Overall, if you don't really dislike proofs, I would suggest taking analytic, it's good for you and you don't really miss out on anything, (at least in Ma 1, apparently you don't do Laplace transforms in 2a analytic but you do in 2a prac., which probably helps in ACM 95b). Math 2b is one class for everyone again.
You really shouldn't worry about it too much yet though. Talk to upperclassmen when you get here and decide then. Ma 1a should give you enough to worry about. |