Math 55

It is also a veritable legend among high schoolers and college students alike, renowned as — allegedly — the hardest undergraduate math class in the country, math 55.

Prerequisites: Mathematical maturity appropriate to a sophomore math class. Credit Option: Students will receive no credit for 55 after taking Computer Science Description: Logic, mathematical induction sets, relations, and functions. Introduction to graphs, elementary number theory, combinatorics, algebraic structures, discrete probability theory. Textbook: Rosen, Discrete Mathematics and its Applications, 8th edition. Week 5: Euclidean algorithm, modular exponentiation, solving congruences, Chinese Remainder Theorem Sections 4. Week 6: Induction and recursion, recursive algorithms Sections 5.

Math 55

On a Wednesday morning on the fifth floor of the Science Center, 20 or so students mill about while Professor Joseph D. He draws arrows and circles and greek letters on the board. He discusses topologies and neighborhoods and endpoints. Thirty minutes in, Harris pauses drawing his diagrams, which by now take up the entire chalkboard, and turns to face the class. Welcome to Math 55, the undergraduate course surrounded by what is perhaps the most intrigue and infamy of any class at Harvard. Even outside of Harvard, Math 55 has garnered outsized attention. The course has its own Wikipedia page and has inspired many TikToks, one of which has racked up over , views. And for a while, it seemed like the Math Department itself was in on the mythologization of the course. But today, the math department takes a different approach to how they present the course. When Preston C. You know, we go to lecture, and then we leave lecture, and then we do the problem set. Although preparation varies, all Math 55 students I spoke to had extensive experience with college- level mathematics. Shleifer took calculus as a freshman in high school. As a sophomore, she pursued college-level math, taking a real analysis and linear algebra course at Harvard Extension School. Bushnell had a similar path, taking calculus as a freshman and ultimately switching to math courses at a nearby college for his last two years of high school.

Even outside of Harvard, Math 55 has garnered outsized attention, math 55. Retrieved December 27, While working as a course assistant for the class, Woodruff received comments saying some non-male students felt uncomfortable asking certain questions during office hours for fear that they would math 55 less prepared or capable.

Math 55 is a two-semester freshman undergraduate mathematics course at Harvard University founded by Lynn Loomis and Shlomo Sternberg. In the past, Harvard University's Department of Mathematics had described Math 55 as "probably the most difficult undergraduate math class in the country. Formerly, students would begin the year in Math 25 which was created in as a lower-level Math 55 and, after three weeks of point-set topology and special topics for instance, in , p -adic analysis was taught by Wilfried Schmid , students would take a quiz. As of , students may choose to enroll in either Math 25 or Math 55 but are advised to "shop" both courses and have five weeks to decide on one. Depending on the professor teaching the class, the diagnostic exam may still be given after three weeks to help students with their decision. In the past, problem sets were expected to take from 24 to 60 hours per week to complete, [4] although some claim that it is closer to 20 hours. In addition to visiting their professor during office hours, students are encouraged to work together on homework assignments.

It is also a veritable legend among high schoolers and college students alike, renowned as — allegedly — the hardest undergraduate math class in the country. It has been mentioned in books and articles, has its own Wikipedia page, and has been the subject of countless social media posts and videos. Most recently, Harvard junior Mahad Khan created a TikTok video dedicated to Math 55 that has received over , views to date. Over the years, perception of Math 55 has become based less on the reality of the course itself and more on a cumulative collection of lore and somewhat sensationalist rumors. At the end of the day, however, Math 55 is a class like any other. Below, we take a stab at busting some of the more well known and persistent myths about the class. Or, at the very least, offering an extra layer of clarity. Most articles or mentions of Math 55 refer to it as filled with math competition champions and genius-level wunderkinds. The class is supposedly legendary among high school math prodigies, who hear terrifying stories about it in their computer camps and at the International Math Olympiad. There are even rumors of a special test students have to take before they are even allowed into Math

Math 55

On a Wednesday morning on the fifth floor of the Science Center, 20 or so students mill about while Professor Joseph D. He draws arrows and circles and greek letters on the board. He discusses topologies and neighborhoods and endpoints. Thirty minutes in, Harris pauses drawing his diagrams, which by now take up the entire chalkboard, and turns to face the class. Welcome to Math 55, the undergraduate course surrounded by what is perhaps the most intrigue and infamy of any class at Harvard. Even outside of Harvard, Math 55 has garnered outsized attention. The course has its own Wikipedia page and has inspired many TikToks, one of which has racked up over , views. And for a while, it seemed like the Math Department itself was in on the mythologization of the course. But today, the math department takes a different approach to how they present the course.

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On a Wednesday morning on the fifth floor of the Science Center, 20 or so students mill about while Professor Joseph D. Dean Hopi Hoekstra. But one, there is a world of difference between 24 and 60 hours that is never explained, and two, this timeframe is quite misaligned with reality. Until recently, Math 55 professors had great latitude with how they taught the course. January 6, Harvard University. June 4, Demographics of students taking this course over the years have been used to study the causes of gender and race differences in STEM. In the past, Harvard University's Department of Mathematics had described Math 55 as "probably the most difficult undergraduate math class in the country. From to , less than seven percent of Math 55 students were female. Most articles or mentions of Math 55 refer to it as filled with math competition champions and genius-level wunderkinds. Others start out in Math 25 and, if not sufficiently challenged, switch to Math Loomis and Sternberg's textbook Advanced Calculus , [14] an abstract treatment of calculus in the setting of normed vector spaces and on differentiable manifolds , was tailored to the authors' Math 55 syllabus and served for many years as an assigned text. December 6, Many students who complete the course become professors in quantitative fields.

May 13 Final Exam clarifications: There is a mistake in Question It should ask you to show that the probability is greater than 0.

Harvard University. Week 5: Euclidean algorithm, modular exponentiation, solving congruences, Chinese Remainder Theorem Sections 4. Dover Publications. Toggle limited content width. Archived from the original on January 21, It turned out to be Math Many students who complete the course become professors in quantitative fields. In , for example, students studied the differential geometry of Banach manifolds in the second semester of Math When he arrived at Harvard earlier this year, Jonah C. Horror stories of endless homework are synonymous with the class. When Preston C.