🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec16.151314.17428@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>, mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel) writes:
|> >If the physics department teaches calculus, what are the mathematicians
|> >going to do?
|> 
|>      If the physics department teaches physics (including calculus) to
|> its students, the mathematics department can teach mathematics to its
|> students in the way it sees fit.  It can also offer courses to students
|> who are just plain interested in the subject.  The current system serves no one
|> particularly well.  Even when there are separate courses for math
|> majors, departments such as physics apply considerable pressure to keep
|> the contents of these courses consistent with those of the "math for
|> physical scientists" courses.  This is not done maliciously; the physics
|> department often just thinks that a properly designed (by physics
|> standards) "math for mathematicians" course is good for their students.
|> Unfortunately, it's bad for the math students and not that great for the
|> physics students either.

I also work as teaching assistant in a physical chemistry lab course and can
agree with your argument from that view.

But on the other hand, I think that already now, the connections
between different departments are very very weak. For students,
the only contact to "neighbor" sciences and the departments are only
through these courses.

I think it is a good training for students to learn things from
a different view. I myself studied Computer Science and we had to
take the same courses as the math-students for a bachalor degree.
This good basic education in mathematics helped me much in physical
chemistry.

The courses like "math for chemists" are (at least from my point of
view) bad, because they assume, that a chemist can not learn the
therory and tries to give many, many cooking recipe, without conection.
I belive that most chemists are not able to give a good lecture about
mathematics.

Tilo