Honors Calculus versus Honors Analysis

CountingDown
Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:07:16 +0000

Parent of a second-year math major here…

S1 had the option of taking Honors Analysis last year and turned it down to take IBL Analysis instead. (There is only one section of IBL Analysis, BTW). It’s more focused on self-directed learning where the students derive everything rather than having it taught to them, and covered pretty much everything HA did. Most of his math major friends started in 160s and found it kicked their butts, especially the Lin Alg parts, which Chicago includes in its calc sequence rather than as a separate course. If you like the IBL approach, there are one or two IBL 160s sections each quarter, too.

S spent a lot of time last year helping friends and housemates with 160s. If you have not done a lot of proof work, you are better off in the 160s or attempting placement in 199, which is a course designed to prepare you for the proofs required in the regular analysis sequence. OTOH, if you take the 160s you are supremely prepared for the next analysis sequence and as JHS mentioned, one can go from 160s to HA as a second year.

The math department advisors are fantastic. They encouraged S to sit on a couple of different sections in the first week before he committed to get a feel for the approach, difficulty, etc. S1 also recommends Spivak > Apostol (yellow pigs represent!), but then again, my mom got him the Princeton Companion to Mathematics and I though his head would explode from joy. YMMV!