How important is Math 1B for CS majors?

ProfessorPlum168
Sun, 08 Jul 2018 16:44:15 +0000

I brought this up a couple of months ago in the Math FAQ thread, so sorry for repeating myself.
My kid is now pretty conflicted as to whether to take Math 1B or take the AP credit and go straight to EE16A which has a lot of linear algebra/differential equations in it from what it sounds like. That is the question. Is all of Math 1B important as a foundation for the future math classes EE16A and CS70, and probably an upper level calculus-based Stats class?

Some background: He got a 5 on his AP Calc BC (subscores of 5 on both AB and BC) so he is allowed to skip both Math 1A and Math 1B. But that was a while back (11th grade), and he didn’t take Multivariate his senior year. From what I can tell from his 4-year planner, he isn’t intending on taking Math 53 (Multivariate) in the future unless he decides to switch majors.

So over the last few weeks he decided to take a set of published tests for a semester from the UCB website for Math 1B. Integration and sequences, no problem. Differential equations, not much problem. Series and Taylor stuff, very shaky. Then there was also some other stuff at the very end that he hadn’t studied before and/or have much recollection.

I think a lot of this indecision stems from the fact that last week he was comparing classes with some of his friends/peers on Facebook who are going to UCB. Most if not all of them are going right into EE16A or Math 53 or Math 54, or in one case Math 55. I think he feels some pressure to keep up with the Joneses (these are all cream of the crop math kids), even though I suspect that taking Math 1B is no big deal. He had B+'s in his AP Calc BC class. However, if he did take Math 1B, I fear that he might consider the class a “remedial” class, blow off the class and get a B or a C.

Another consideration is that if he took EE16A in the fall, he would probably be taking the class with a large number of the cream-of-the-crop math whizzes who have also credited out of Math 1A/1B, which may or may not be an issue with grading. Yet another consideration is that he has a ton of credits for CCC and AP and probably can graduate way early, especially if he can skip classes like Math 1A and 1B.