PhD and Development

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[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:

[quote]spar4tee wrote:

[quote]1 Man Island wrote:

[quote]spar4tee wrote:
5? Would you care to elaborate? I can only think of 4. I don’t believe precalculus counts calc and don’t see why anyone would need take both survey of calc and calc one.[/quote]

I went to a rather quant-heavy school (though, I didn’t do the phd-prep route), so I don’t know if this is the case everywhere, but the undergrad classes required to graduate (but not for credit, as mentioned above) include:
Introduction�??�??�?� to�??�??�?� Mathematical�??�??�?� Software
Calculus�??�??�?� I
Calculus�??�??�?� II
Differential�??�??�?� and�??�??�?� Integral�??�??�?� Calculus
Integration,�??�??�?� Differential�??�??�?� Equations�??�??�?� &�??�??�?� Approximation
CalculusÃ???Ã???Ã??Ã? ofÃ???Ã???Ã??Ã? ApproximationÃ???Ã???Ã??Ã?Â

These are in addition to discrete mathematics, real analysis, linear algebra, matrix algebra, econometrics, statistics, and mgmt science courses.
[/quote]
I see. I’ve seen some of approximation calculus before but never heard of it as a course. Makes sense though. Am I correct in thinking that differential and integral calculus would be the equivalent of calc 3? “Introduction to Mathematical Software” sounds a lot like “Computing for Engineers”. Did you use Matlab?[/quote]

It is usually called “numerical analysis” and they are not considered calculus courses but rather a discipline in and of itself since you are not using limits and the techniques are not always limited to the same constraints that the theorems in calculus are, but the techniques that are developed in this field are very useful to approximate solutions when the solutions cannot be found explicitly, which is most of the time.[/quote]
Ah okay. I am familiar with that class then.

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I can’t speak to calc 3… you could just check out the syllabus to see if the focus is on differential/integral stuff.

RE: software… I don’t know what they use in that specific class, but various types of software I’ve seen used include Matlab, R, Mathmatica, Risk Solver Platform, Crystal Ball, even MiniTab. This is in addition to all modeling stuff (SAS, SPSS, STATA), which depends more on what specific field you go into; I believe the UN/IMF uses STATA, but an organization like RAND -which produces some great analyses- tends to use SAS.

I actually never went past pre-calc, myself… and, contrary to what doc mentioned, we had professors reteach stuff all of the time, from matrix algebra to calc… but it would be more along the lines of compressing and entire unit of calc into 5-10 minutes.

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[quote]1 Man Island wrote:
I can’t speak to calc 3… you could just check out the syllabus to see if the focus is on differential/integral stuff.

RE: software… I don’t know what they use in that specific class, but various types of software I’ve seen used include Matlab, R, Mathmatica, Risk Solver Platform, Crystal Ball, even MiniTab. This is in addition to all modeling stuff (SAS, SPSS, STATA), which depends more on what specific field you go into; I believe the UN/IMF uses STATA, but an organization like RAND -which produces some great analyses- tends to use SAS.

I actually never went past pre-calc, myself… and, contrary to what doc mentioned, we had professors reteach stuff all of the time, from matrix algebra to calc… but it would be more along the lines of compressing and entire unit of calc into 5-10 minutes.[/quote]
Gotcha.

Yeah they do lol. I think the curriculum requires it for most schools.