Math requirements for engineering majors

collegealum314 · October 30, 2007, 8:41pm

Differential raises a good point about it being easier to walk into biology later from an engineering background. However, I don’t think one programming class is going to allow you to approach biology from a unique angle. You pretty much need to be trained as an engineer or programmer and then apply it. One class won’t do that.

However, requiring a biology class might be a good idea as it may encourage people to apply their engineering to biological problems in their future. Anyway, you could get out of biology if you got a 5 on the AP exam, and that’s not too hard anyway.

molliebatmit · October 30, 2007, 10:55pm

^Well, you can’t now – as of this year, the biology department started requiring a passing score on their ASE. (Do any of the current students know what the pass rate was for that test this year?)

collegealum314 · October 30, 2007, 11:06pm

^^I think that’s a mistake. They should definitely let you out of Chem and Bio if you get a 5 on the AP.

Chelmar · October 30, 2007, 11:30pm

<a href=“http://mit.edu/firstyear/2011/subjects/ap.html[/url]”>http://mit.edu/firstyear/2011/subjects/ap.html</a>

cellardweller · October 31, 2007, 12:56am

Collegealumn:

MIT has eliminated the ability to skip either bio and chem based on AP scores and I strongly agree with the decision. This was based on detailed studies by the faculty that these HS schools courses were very poor proxies for a basic understanding in these fields. Less than 10% of the students with a 5 on AP chem got a passing grade on the ASE and the numbers were low as well for bio. My daughter took AP Chem in HS and is right now taking 5.111. The two classes are like day and night and she has learned more in a few months than in 2 years of chem in HS. I would not be surprised if MIT soon eliminated entirely any AP credit for math and physics as the students who took these courses prior to MIT only do marginally better than those who did not. That seems to part of the new GIR recommendations.

I also completely disagree that it is easier to pick up chem or bio just because you have an engineering background. At MIT engineering majors generally do poorly in these courses as compared to science majors even though they take the very basic versions of chem and bio. Doing well in something like orgo or molecular biology takes a lot more than simple memorization.

Again I have seen no evidence from any published studies that CS is a fundamental science that other disciplines build upon, unlike math, physics, biology or chemistry. This is largely why even MIT never required CS to be part of the GIRs. If the idea is to build a strong logical mind, then a course like analysis with proofs is a much better option IMHO.

My professional experience has generally been that biomedical software is highly specific and that efficient application development requires considerable domain knowledge. I have found it often easier to teach biologists to program using some of the new development tools than computer programmers to understand the biological processes involved.

It is interesting to note that MIT seemed to agree with that premise when it formed the new Biological Engineering department, the only new department added in the past two decades. MIT essentially rejected the traditional biomedical engineering training model where biology was just another application among many of traditional engineering fields such as mechanical, chemical or electrical engineering. Biology is at the core of BE and other disciplines have a supporting role as opposed to the reverse. It is no surprise that in a few short years it has become one of the hottest departments at MIT, with many more applicants than slots available.

differential · October 31, 2007, 2:04am

I think there is another reason that 6.001/6.01 is not a GIR. All of the GIR’s currently are exemptable (except for HASS). 6.001/6.01 is not exemptable. From what I have seen, there is already enough differentiation between student abilities in 6.001/6.01. And this is just aspiring EECS students. To try and force the entire freshmen class to take 6.001/6.01 would be a nightmare.

Interestingly, my research lies at the intersection of bioengineering and computer science. I have found that the “hottest” work being done at MIT for BE is often directly in collaboration with EECS profs (CS people have long since recognized that there is ripe fruit to pick in the biologies, and so there is a HUGE interest in applying CS to bio right now). The point of CS is not to teach some specific applications here and there. They are trying to train you in the art of being able to look at immensely complicated problems in any field, abstract away at the problem, and figure out how to solve it. CS is about solving problems. It doesn’t specify what types of problems. Once you are very very good at being able to rip up problems and reassemble them, then learning about a specific domain is not very hard. And good CS students who are dedicated to solving a problem in another domain are NOT going to try brute memorization. People do memorization when

A) there is no evident pattern or
B) they don’t give a damn about the subject and don’t want to look for a pattern

of course once someone looks at something with serious interest in solving some outlying problem, they are going to look for patterns.

“Again I have seen no evidence from any published studies that CS is a fundamental science that other disciplines build upon, unlike math, physics, biology or chemistry.”

Theoretical CS for math, computational/lattice physics, computational chemistry, and computational biology/bioinformatics/biostatistics. That’s just stuff CS has done to aid other fields. EECS has in itself enough important problems that are so relevant to our everyday life in civilization that it in itself rivals relevance against chemistry, bio, etc.

Take a look at many of the best BioEng schools in the country. You will find them at schools that take a “quantitative” approach as MIT does. Now look at the degree’s of the professors in BioEng. Then take a look at the students graduating from these BioEng schools and getting the best positions in other universities/industry. Look at what degree’s they got in their undergraduate years. I think you will find the trend I have mentioned before about the rigorous engineering fields and CS giving one a solid background in tackling domain-independent problems.
I’m not trying to wank about CS being awesome. Instead I’m trying to argue that EECS is fundamental enough to modern civilization that every student deserves to experience it for a single semester. And it shouldn’t be a programming-esque class.

But I don’t want to spend forever arguing. And since I have no say in what becomes a GIR I’m just going to leave at this.

PS: CellarDweller, there is a specific section in the Institute Task Force Report talking about why AP Calc BC and AP Physics C are excellent substitutes for 18.01 and 18.02.

collegealum314 · October 31, 2007, 4:17am

Cellardwellar: Well, first of all, I never said you could walk into chemistry from an engineering background. I said you could walk into biology and do research very easily without much background. I know because I did it, and all I had was one college class in biology. I don’t think you could do the same thing in chemistry.

Another example of walking into biology was Richard Feynman, who as a professor spent one summer in molecular biology (I’m not sure why he did this.) He almost discovered ribosomes that summer, a discovery that would have won him another Nobel Prize. There was some problem in the lab that prevented him from doing so. It was in one of his books. But he certainly was able to understand biological problems from the get-go.

As for the Advanced Standing Exams, I really don’t know how comprehensive they are because I never took one. There are some things after you learn that are very basic and you never really use later on. Formal charge is an example. There are also some other weird topics that chemists don’t really use but you would encounter in basic chem. Even if you ace an MIT class, a few years later you may forget some of the details but you would still have the intuition. The reason why this may be a pain to entering freshman is that it may be years since you have taken the super-basic stuff. I took a year of organic chemistry as a junior and aced the AP chem exam, but I think even I would have had to study to pass some advanced standing exam. Calculus is another example. I got a high A in a multi-variable class that was much harder than MIT’s, but 8 months after the course I doubt I could have passed an advanced standing exam without studying for it. It just means that people would have to spend the summer before MIT studying for advanced standing exams.

The reasons why there was such a big push to end placement out of classes with a 5 on the AP is the poor performance of a lot of people freshman year. However, this really had nothing to do with people’s preparation before coming to MIT. The biggest reason was the fact that is was pass/fail so a lot of people didn’t go to class, and also because of the fraternity pledging system. Also, the fraternity completely monopolized people’s time because they knew that you were on pass/fail. A few times they scheduled stuff during class, telling us that missing class would show our devotion to the frat. A significant minority of people in the frat system failed at least one class (I didn’t, but then I already knew everything in the classes I was taking.) One guy I knew failed every class and left MIT. His background coming into MIT was fine; the only problem was that it wasn’t good enough for him to not learn anything his first semester and pass. Incidentally, once people were off pass/fail they shaped up and did fine.

collegealum314 · October 31, 2007, 5:56am

Cellardwellar: Well, first of all, I never said you could walk into chemistry from an engineering background. I said you could walk into biology and do research very easily without much background. I know because I did it, and all I had was one college class in biology. I don’t think you could do the same thing in chemistry.

Another example of walking into biology was Richard Feynman, who as a professor spent one summer in molecular biology (I’m not sure why he did this.) He almost discovered ribosomes that summer, a discovery that would have won him another Nobel Prize. There was some problem in the lab that prevented him from doing so. It was in one of his books. But he certainly was able to understand biological problems from the get-go.

As for the Advanced Standing Exams, I really don’t know how comprehensive they are because I never took one. There are some things that are very basic but that you never really use later on. Formal charge is an example. There are also some other weird topics that chemists don’t really use but you would encounter in basic chem. Even if you ace an MIT class, a few years later you may forget some of the details but you would still have the intuition. The reason why this may be a pain to entering freshman is that it may be years since you have taken the super-basic (AP) stuff. I took a year of organic chemistry as a junior and aced the AP chem exam, but I think even I would have had to study to pass some advanced standing exam. Calculus is another example. I got a high A in a multi-variable class that was much harder than MIT’s, but 8 months after the course I doubt I could have passed an advanced standing exam without studying for it. I mean, right now I don’t know what Green’s theorem is but I still have the intuition that if I needed to use MVC for an advanced physics class I could do it. It just means that people would have to spend the summer before MIT studying for advanced standing exams.

The reasons why there was such a big push to end placement out of classes with a 5 on the AP is the poor performance of a lot of people freshman year. However, this really had nothing to do with people’s preparation before coming to MIT. The biggest reason was the fact that it was pass/fail so a lot of people didn’t go to class, and also because of the fraternity pledging system. Also, the fraternity completely monopolized people’s time because they knew that you were on pass/fail. A few times they scheduled stuff during class, telling us that missing class would show our devotion to the frat. A significant minority of people in the frat system failed at least one class (I didn’t, but then I already knew everything in the classes I was taking.) One guy I knew failed every class and left MIT. His background coming into MIT was fine; the only problem was that his background wasn’t good enough for him to not learn anything his first semester and still pass. Incidentally, once people were off pass/fail they shaped up and did fine. (As an aside, this is one reason why I think MIT Adcomm should not be drawing conclusions about what the SAT math scores mean from freshman grades. Considering what a mess the freshman year is for most people because of the pledge system and pass/fail, I don’t feel it’s an accurate predictor of future academic success at MIT.)

jessiehl · October 31, 2007, 9:22am

Maybe it was something about your frat. That hasn’t been true of the frat experience of most of my friends in frats.

A significant minority of the student population fails a class first term. It’s not always because they’re slacking off. I very nearly failed 5.112, and it was because I had trouble getting my head around the material.

That’s because it’s a relatively young field.

One nice thing about MIT is that, if you’re a life science major who plays things right (choosing your classes wisely and taking a few supplementary classes), you can walk into engineering later. I’m doing it. You can’t do that with the life science majors at most schools.

You can make the “OMG you need to take this subject because it teaches you how to THINK” argument for a whole range of subjects, and people do, and it usually comes off as incredibly smug and wanky. I just figure that physics, bio, and chem are the primary colors, so to speak, of science, and science is the basis of engineering, so science and engineering majors should take them (and since MIT is a tech school, so should everyone else).

cellardweller · October 31, 2007, 10:31am

Differential:

I am not trying to claim CS is not useful. I don’t think much would happen in science today if the only data processing tool we had was a slide rule. My argument from the beginning has been that a CS course should not be a requirement for all MIT students, particularly the non-engineering majors who comprise half of the student population.

My premise is quite simple. The departments have loaded up the schedule of their students with what they consider essential requirements. I believe they are best equipped to design the curriculum of their respective students. If they believe that CS could be part of the curriculum they will make such a class available as an option. Some have added such classes.

Another issue is that many non-engineering majors are also double majors math/physics, econ/business, neuroscience/biology etc… After the HASS requirements, this leaves precious little room for electives. This makes adding a new class a zero sum game. Something else would have to go. Reducing the HASS requirements to accommodate a CS class would be a very bad idea as MIT students if anything need to develop their communication skills. I think the proposed solution under the new core whereby students could pick a CS class instead of another core class is a good compromise. But it would be at the option of the student.

cellardweller · October 31, 2007, 10:49am

Collegealumn: Even if it is true that those with AP Calc or AP Physics backgrounds meet the minimum qualification of 18.01 and 8.01, it has also been shown year after year that the average performance at the next level (18.02 and 8.02) of the students who get credit for these classes is lower than those who take 18.01 and 8.01 while at MIT. So the preparation is clearly not equivalent.

collegealum314 · October 31, 2007, 12:23pm

^^according to who? I don’t believe that, frankly. It’s implying that people with the best background going into MIT end up doing worse. So the 30 guys that end up placing in the top 50 on the Putnam exam plus all the rest of the super-geniuses do worse in 18.02 on average than the average person who couldn’t even get a 5 on the AP Calc exam. I don’t believe it.

Anyway, you would have to study performance in later classes (past 8.02 and 18.02) since until recently pass/fail was for the entire year. Again, even looking at 18.02 performance how do you know that the lower performance was due to the fact they took it 1st semester rather than second? Like I said, the first semester was crazy for all the guys in a frat. Even for those people not in a frat, a lot of the people with the best background slacked off at least first semester while on pass/fail. When they got off pass/fail, things changed quite a bit when they actually tried.

BTW, it was common knowledge that the people who took 8.022 the first semester were the smartest physics people. (I took it second semester, so I’m not saying this as some kind of ego trip.)

collegealum314 · October 31, 2007, 12:59pm

“Maybe it was something about your frat. That hasn’t been true of the frat experience of most of my friends in frats.”

Well, things have changed a lot since the freshman-on-campus rule. It’s not as easy to monopolize their time when the freshman live in dorms while they are pledging. Also, isn’t the pledging process delayed until 2nd semester?

Still, even though things have changed, they are still using the bulk of their data from a time when the first semester was crazy. That is my main point, not to complain about the way things were. When I was there, a significant minority of people depledged from their fraternities during first semester. One-third of the pledges at my frat depledged. 3 out of the 4 people from my high school depledged from their frat at MIT, and we were in different frats. They could have just waited and finished the pledge program and then lived in a dorm 2nd semester. But it was so bad they had to get out or it was such a big time commitment they just couldn’t do it anymore.

When I was interviewing for a UROP at the end of 1st semester, I told the professor the address on my resume’ was changing because I was leaving my frat. His response was, “You too?”

I’ll add that in my experience the girls had no idea what was going on in the fraternity. They would come every week for our parties and see us in class, but they really had no clue what was involved, even the girls that knew us pretty well.

collegealum314 · October 31, 2007, 1:06pm

“You can make the “OMG you need to take this subject because it teaches you how to THINK” argument for a whole range of subjects, and people do, and it usually comes off as incredibly smug and wanky.”

Just to clarify, I wasn’t saying that engineering teaches you to think or that bio doesn’t. Bio just doesn’t build on itself in the same way that other disciplines do, so you could easily walk into it and do research with no college degree. There aren’t the same layers of abstraction that other fields like physics do. It’s pretty much, if you know how to think already then you will be able to grapple with biological problems pretty quickly.

pebbles · October 31, 2007, 1:12pm

no, that statement is simply not true, or not true anymore, or not true in that order: take your pick. What is conceivably true is, “SOME of the smartest physics students opted to take 8.022 first semester.” The average level of first semester 8.022 students was/is higher than the average level of 8.012 students, only because of their obvious interest in physics and motivation as evidenced by their choices. This does not mean that 8.022 students are necessarily smarter than 8.012 students, or better prepared, or else we’d never have anyone take 8.022 twice freshman year- and yeah, that happens.

collegealum314 · October 31, 2007, 1:39pm

"The average level of first semester 8.022 students was/is higher than the average level of 8.012 students, only because of their obvious interest in physics and motivation as evidenced by their choices. "

Well, I was only saying that it’s doubtful that the people who placed out of it were a lower-performing group than the people who didn’t.

jessiehl · October 31, 2007, 1:55pm

No, it’s still first.

I do suspect that even before FOC, it varied a lot by frat, simply because everything else in the frat system does. I mean, you can’t really compare, say, tEp and ATO, to use an extreme example, or even two more culturally similar frats like ZBT and Sigma Nu. There are still frats where I would guess that what you’re describing goes on. There are others that would never dream of doing it, and based on their cultures, I suspect that unless they underwent a radical cultural change in the last few years, this was true pre-FOC as well.

cellardweller · October 31, 2007, 4:22pm

Collegealumn:

I said the scores on “average” on 18.02 of those who took AP credit for 18.01 were lower than those who did not. The top math performers are not included in the analysis as they easily pass the ASE for 18.02 and get credit for the class. The data is directly from the math department and I will get you the link. Even though the classes may have been taken pass/fail the grades were always available to the math department. Pledging for frats has nothing to do with the results it as it included students taking 18.02 during the same term. Even the students taking the 18.01/18.02 combo over fall/IAP did better than the students taking 18.02 in the fall of freshman year. The math department has long complained about the fact that getting a 5 on AP Calc is by itself no guarantee of adequate preparation for 18.02.

differential · October 31, 2007, 5:08pm

Yeah but AP credit lets people who know what they are doing and want to get ahead get ahead. If you don’t grant me AP credit for subjects I took my sophomore and junior year, then I’m going to have to study a little over the summer. Studying 4-5 ASE’s at once is a *****. So then I’m probably not going to exempt everything that I should be able to. But I’m not going to stand for having to retake 18.01/8.01. You’ll suggest that I take 18.012 and 8.012. But other kids are going to just take 18.01/8.01, so the logic doesn’t work. So if you’re not going to grant AP credit for physics and calculus, you’ll have to raise the bar for EVERY class that can be exempted the way that Caltech does, such that EVERYONE has to take 18.012 and 8.012. And that’s just simply not going to happen.

pebbles · October 31, 2007, 6:45pm

I believe it though. They’re not a lower performing group in general physics (they a more advanced obviously) but you can bet your house that they can’t out-do the 8.012 graduates in classical mechanics.

Math requirements for engineering majors

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