Thursday, November 30, 2006

Disappointed

I just finished auditing a graduate mathematics class at a university that shall remain nameless, but I did not enjoy the experience at all. I have never taken a math class where everything was so pre-digested for me. At the beginning of each section, the professor assigned problems from the book as exercises, standard operating procedure. A few lectures later, he would select a couple of the more challenging ones (translation: the only interesting ones) and provide "hints" so comprehensive that 90% of the proof had been worked out. Before the exam, he handed out a graded homework assignment that contained the same proof again (not a similar proof, the same proof). And then on exam day, the same proof would show up a third time. A shame.