<p>Can anyone tell me about these depts? How is placement for kids who come in beyond AP BC Calc? DS would like to look at a couple of LACs with strong math programs and so we would love to hear what Carls (current students, alums, parents) have to say!</p>
<p>I am planning to major in math and would also love to hear about Carleton’s math program!!</p>
<p>I love the Carleton math department, there are some really great profs there. I came in with a 5 on the AP Calc BC exam, so I placed out of the Calc I/Calc II sequence and went into Calc III (multivariable calculus). Carleton is changing the old Math 121 (Calc II) course and breaking it up into three five-week sections that you can place out of individually, but this will mostly affect people who come in with credit for the AB exam but not the BC, as far as I can tell. To be a math major you must take (or place out of) Calc I, Calc II (or the new equivalent), Calc III, linear algebra, and an intro to proofs and set theory course called math structures. After that, you can pretty much take whatever you want in any order, though there are some classes that need to be taken in sequence: probability followed by mathematical statistics followed by applied regression analysis or topics in prob/stat, ordinary diff eq followed by partial diff eq, real analysis I followed by real analysis II, abstract algebra I followed by abstract algebra II, and this year there’s a seminar on algebraic geometry that has abstract algebra I as a prereq. You basically need to take just six upper level courses to complete the major and they need to span at least three of the five major areas the department has identified (algebra, analysis, geometry/topology, applied, discrete structures). It’s pretty easy to finish the major during your junior year or even by the end of your sophomore year if you have the placement and are willing to take more than one math class some terms, so math is a very common major to take on as a double major, since double majoring here is quite difficult. Also, there’s the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program, which a good number of math majors go on every fall, and if you’re thinking about going to grad school in math it’s almost a must. Math comps (er, comprehensive projects) used to be just giving an hour-long talk on an assigned topic, but now they’ve become more group/research oriented and involve more original work and less trying to make really difficult concepts accessible to an audience with limited math ability. The math department web page lists the topics for this coming year and previous years if you are so inclined. What is a little surprising about the department is that most majors don’t pursue math graduate programs coming out of it compared to the rest of the science departments, only a few per year typically, though I think that has to do a lot with the fact that there are a lot of double majors in math/CS, math/econ, math/physics, where math is more of a secondary support major than the primary interest.</p>
<p>Thanks for this info…how does the math and CS work together? Are things geared towards the theoretical or more the practical side?</p>
<p>The departments split last year, so it’s not longer the math/CS department. That said, they have at least one overlapping professor who teaches both math and CS courses, and if you look on the websites for each department about the major requirements, you’ll notice that some math classes can substitute for theoretical CS prereqs. I have only taken a couple of the CS courses so I can’t comment on practicality vs. theoretically in the upper-level courses (you might poke around online syllabi and assignments to get an idea), but the math ones are pretty straightforward. Most of the upper-level math classes are proof-based and theoretical, aside from the obvious applied ones like the statistics classes and the differential equations classes. A rule of thumb might be that if the course requires math 236 (mathematical structures) then it will be theoretical, and otherwise it’s applied since it won’t emphasize proofs. You’ll get more applications of the applied math classes in other departments, though, particularly in the sciences and upper-level social sciences.</p>