How is the math department at Fordham

WillyWankaWannaB
Wed, 10 Oct 2007 22:34:29 +0000

My son completed Calc I and II at Fordham, and is now in Multivariable. I know he would disagree with that previous opinion about the Calculus course at Fordham. He did calc I,II,III, and linear algebra in high school, and although he didn’t struggle with Calc I&II at Fordham, he did find it challenging at times. He would say that the emphasis was much different than in high school. In his high school (and probably most) he would memorize processes without being truly taught the derivations that would give him a deeper understanding on the mathematics. In his math and physics courses thus far at Fordham, it is the derivations that are very important - they really want the student to understand how these mathematical concepts come to be, because if you understand the fundamental concepts then you can forget the formula and still solve the problem. Or better yet, if you cannot find the solution, you can go back and start with the derivations to find another way to solve it. For instance in his calc and physics courses, he is being trained to understand and solve problems without “numbers” so to say until much later in the lessons. Rather, Fordham is training him to analyze and understand problems with generic letters in front of the variables. This is definitely a much harder concept than what is taught at many high schools in math and physics. College courses usually are, and should be, at a higher lever of understanding.

My son chose to take Calc I, and not jump directly into Calc II, which in the long run he was happy that he did. Calc I is differentiation, which is easier to understand than Calc II, which is integration. Calc I gave him the “maturing” time to understand derivations on somewhat easier material (I’m not an upper level math person so please bear with what may be a bad translation from a non-math/physics mind :)