Today's weather: High = 28 Low = 19
Cloudy
For the sake of my own sanity, I had to do it. As mentioned in previous posts, I'm currently taking a MMT program, which is Masters of Math for Teachers, offered by the University of Waterloo. The masters degree is online, which means of course that it is designed for people, i.e. teachers, who work and do the course simultaneously.
At this point I must clear up two common misconceptions that everyone I have talked to who isn't taking this program seems to think about this program. First, this masters degree is not an education masters, I repeat it is NOT about education, or anything to do with a MEd or MA. This program focuses on hardcore math content knowledge. The term 'for teachers' doesn't mean that the program is designed to help people become better math teachers. Rather 'for teachers' simply means those are the people taking the program.
Secondly, this is not one of those online masters degrees you can do in two years, as most people I know seem to have been able to accomplish with various other types of masters degrees. If it takes you three years to do this program, then you're pushing yourself, either by taking summer courses or multiple courses per semester -- in which case you would likely not be working a full-time job at the same time.
Realistically it will take you 4 years, even 5 years to do this while you're working and taking the program at a reasonable pace. This was what I wrote in previous blogs, but the ongoing temptation was for me to jump the gun and try to accelerate the pace to 3 years, thus aiming to get it done by June 2014.
Well it turns out that I was under the impression that a certain course 'History of Mathematics' was easier and could be done during summer semester (May through July) because it simply involved reading and essay writing. Unfortunately I didn't do enough research and signed up for the course from what colleagues said. I was expecting an easy breezy reading course, after a hardcore run of math content over the past two semesters.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. This course was the most brutal one yet, based on many factors. Workload, types of assignments, and tons of new math content to learn. Basically we would have to learn a whole new set of math content each week for each mathematician we were learning the history of, in additional to reading and essay writing. Then a final project worth 60% of the mark where 20 pages was the minimum -- all using a new software program that I'm still getting the hang of.
The worst part of all was that none of this information about expectations was found in the course description, and one could easily believe this was a reading course, strictly going from that.
As a case in point, the first week was all about cryptography, based on the mathematician William Tutte. He was essentially responsible for cracking the codes that the Nazis used in the war and spying on the enemy communications. Tutte was able to confirm through his code cracking that the enemy believed the Allied Troops were going to land their ships at a certain bluff spot, when in fact the troops would land at Normandy for the surprise that ultimately won the war.
Tutte did amazing work in cracking the enemy codes from what they used as a 'Fish Machine' and Tutte essentially built the first computer from scratch in order to do this.
If we only needed to read about this amazing man and write essays on his work, that would be great. However, the first week of this course also required that we delve deep into cryptography and solve ciphers ourselves, specifically the Vigenere Cipher. A brutal first written assignment was only worth 8% of the course mark yet I spent nearly 20 hours learning cryptography for the first time and applying it to solve the problems we were required to do. The directions for the assignment were very vague and so I invented methods of my own that were totally different from the methods that the prof insisted we use.
Based on my learning thus far, I find cryptography to be fascinating, however, this topic would easily be enough to justify a whole math masters course in itself, not just one mere week.
The sad fact is that after this week, we move on to a new topic with a new mathematician, and have to learn a whole new set of math content related to whoever the guy happens to be. For example, next week we learn about Euclid, and of course there is new math to learn for that, specifically Euclidean solutions to quadratic equations. The week after that we get into Islamic mathematicians, and learn a whole new set of math related to their contributions Of course we need to learn about Islam background too.
All in all, a good course, but let's be honest: each week is a bloody module in itself! The workload alone for this course would kill me. Combined with the fact that May and June are the busiest times of the school year, it was a matter of necessity that I had to drop this course.
There is no penalty, I get my full money back and the drop doesn't show on the transcript, as long as this takes place before May 21.
Cloudy
For the sake of my own sanity, I had to do it. As mentioned in previous posts, I'm currently taking a MMT program, which is Masters of Math for Teachers, offered by the University of Waterloo. The masters degree is online, which means of course that it is designed for people, i.e. teachers, who work and do the course simultaneously.
At this point I must clear up two common misconceptions that everyone I have talked to who isn't taking this program seems to think about this program. First, this masters degree is not an education masters, I repeat it is NOT about education, or anything to do with a MEd or MA. This program focuses on hardcore math content knowledge. The term 'for teachers' doesn't mean that the program is designed to help people become better math teachers. Rather 'for teachers' simply means those are the people taking the program.
Secondly, this is not one of those online masters degrees you can do in two years, as most people I know seem to have been able to accomplish with various other types of masters degrees. If it takes you three years to do this program, then you're pushing yourself, either by taking summer courses or multiple courses per semester -- in which case you would likely not be working a full-time job at the same time.
Realistically it will take you 4 years, even 5 years to do this while you're working and taking the program at a reasonable pace. This was what I wrote in previous blogs, but the ongoing temptation was for me to jump the gun and try to accelerate the pace to 3 years, thus aiming to get it done by June 2014.
Well it turns out that I was under the impression that a certain course 'History of Mathematics' was easier and could be done during summer semester (May through July) because it simply involved reading and essay writing. Unfortunately I didn't do enough research and signed up for the course from what colleagues said. I was expecting an easy breezy reading course, after a hardcore run of math content over the past two semesters.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. This course was the most brutal one yet, based on many factors. Workload, types of assignments, and tons of new math content to learn. Basically we would have to learn a whole new set of math content each week for each mathematician we were learning the history of, in additional to reading and essay writing. Then a final project worth 60% of the mark where 20 pages was the minimum -- all using a new software program that I'm still getting the hang of.
The worst part of all was that none of this information about expectations was found in the course description, and one could easily believe this was a reading course, strictly going from that.
As a case in point, the first week was all about cryptography, based on the mathematician William Tutte. He was essentially responsible for cracking the codes that the Nazis used in the war and spying on the enemy communications. Tutte was able to confirm through his code cracking that the enemy believed the Allied Troops were going to land their ships at a certain bluff spot, when in fact the troops would land at Normandy for the surprise that ultimately won the war.
Tutte did amazing work in cracking the enemy codes from what they used as a 'Fish Machine' and Tutte essentially built the first computer from scratch in order to do this.
If we only needed to read about this amazing man and write essays on his work, that would be great. However, the first week of this course also required that we delve deep into cryptography and solve ciphers ourselves, specifically the Vigenere Cipher. A brutal first written assignment was only worth 8% of the course mark yet I spent nearly 20 hours learning cryptography for the first time and applying it to solve the problems we were required to do. The directions for the assignment were very vague and so I invented methods of my own that were totally different from the methods that the prof insisted we use.
Based on my learning thus far, I find cryptography to be fascinating, however, this topic would easily be enough to justify a whole math masters course in itself, not just one mere week.
The sad fact is that after this week, we move on to a new topic with a new mathematician, and have to learn a whole new set of math content related to whoever the guy happens to be. For example, next week we learn about Euclid, and of course there is new math to learn for that, specifically Euclidean solutions to quadratic equations. The week after that we get into Islamic mathematicians, and learn a whole new set of math related to their contributions Of course we need to learn about Islam background too.
All in all, a good course, but let's be honest: each week is a bloody module in itself! The workload alone for this course would kill me. Combined with the fact that May and June are the busiest times of the school year, it was a matter of necessity that I had to drop this course.
There is no penalty, I get my full money back and the drop doesn't show on the transcript, as long as this takes place before May 21.
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