Quote Originally Posted by Pokemon Trainer Sarah View Post
Yeah it's pretty interesting how they force maths on people. I probably use maths more than most people in daily life. But I can't say I've had to do any complex calculus. xD I don't know much about US college stuff, but I heard that often everyone has to do a common first year or something where they have to do all kinds of subjects (like maths!) that aren't even related to their course? And then after that they specialise? Is that right?

Over here you don't do that. I didn't need to do any maths at all for my science course (unless I wanted to). I only did chemistry and biology subjects and I ended up doing first and second year statistics by choice, which I enjoyed and probably should have pursued cos I'd be rich right now. XD
It's pretty similar over here as well. In fact, you could simply go to college as an "undecided" major, do the first year mandatory classes, and then decide a little later. And it does include algebra, some kind of history class, an English/literature class, and some kind of science class. After that, it kind of depends on what college you go to. Some will require one thing over another and vice versa, but generally, it's the same kind of deal.

For my business major, I had to take a "Quantitative Methods for Business" class which was a butt-load of loopy, mind-grating algebra and a bit of calculus, but it really had nothing to do with business, unlike what the name implied. And I was happy to get a D- in that one simply because I at least passed and didn't need to take the class all over again. After that came a few statistics classes which were still math-based, but they were a LOT easier to follow. Yep, there were still crazy-looking formulas and stuff, but it at least made sense and you could see where some of this would be applicable to business in terms of forecasting and probability. I still wouldn't want a career that directly deals with that stuff. I mean I could handle it, but I wouldn't enjoy it very much.