"Maths, in university, is useless bull..."

[Drogue]

Originally posted by Asher
There's the point again -- why are their economic prospects not so good after they're done? If it was truly beneficial, would this not reflect in their salaries afterwards?

Not necessarily. A higher proportion of philosophy grads (in the UK) go into teaching, charity work and other public service, that usually pays less than it's commercial counterparts. Accountancy pays more than most, but are accountants really as important as teachers, engineers or doctors?

[Kuciwalker]

Don't most teachers get a degree in education?

So funding education degrees is better than funding philosophy degrees if you want more teachers. And why would you need philosophy for charity work?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Thus, it needs to show another public good to justify government subsidy.

Yes, I agree, and perhaps I skipped a step in my statement, but I am arguing that a great majority of people believe it to be a public good and thus demanding public subsidy for it. If the people did not think philosophy was a public good, I'd argue it would not be funded at the unversity.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Don't most teachers get a degree in education?

Only the crap ones . Actually though in the US most pre-univeristy teachers are required to get a degree in education due to the teachers' unions. Someone who is a history God can't teach at the local high school without 'education training'. Frankly it's a dumb requirement.

However, in the University, I doubt you'll see anyone outside the education department that got a degree in education. Though you may see those who got a degree in philosophy in the Political Science Department or History Department.

[Kuciwalker]

My point being that a philosophy degree is not the best suited to becoming a teacher, except maybe of philosophy

[Drogue]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Don't most teachers get a degree in education?

Not in the UK, teaching is usually done as a PGCE qualification, a years postgrad degree, or two years work experience type thing, IIRC. You can do a 4 year combined teaching degree, but most do the 3+1 route.

[Imran Siddiqui]

My point being that a philosophy degree is not the best suited to becoming a teacher

Frankly, I'd rather have those who specialize in critical thinking be my teacher rather than someone who has gotten a degree in 'education'.

[Kuciwalker]

Aggie has a philsophy degree

PWNED!!!!

[Imran Siddiqui]

And Kidiculous has an economics degree.... there are always exceptions .

All kidding aside, I don't think Aggie would be a bad professor. I've known plenty of biased professors who can act very neutral or be very interesting without offending in the classroom.

[Ben Kenobi]

Exactly provable.

For instance, (given a normal understanding of what I mean by various arithmetic operations and mathematical symbols), saying that 2*x=4 implies x=2 is rigorous.

And a very narrow definition of rigorous.

1: rigidly accurate; allowing no deviation from a standard;

Or

2: demanding strict attention to rules and procedures;

Seem to me better definitions that can apply not only to maths, but also to Philosophy. There are certain rules in philosophy that need to be followed, in order to establish a proof, similar to those in maths.

Look at all your logic, is that mathematical, or philosophical? Or what you consider a proof by induction? That can be done by both. It certainly is not the sole property of mathematics.

[Ben Kenobi]

Considering in the UK, that would include 2nd year college level maths, that's not bad.

No, not quite that far along in our program, since we do the maths at the same time as that particular compsci course.

The course was available for both science majors and compsci majors, and was not just the introductory course.

At the time, I was in honours sciences out at UBC, and looking at getting into co-op, and this is the compsci course they recommended that I take for my placement in the spring session.

So the maths we were expected to have are the first year calculus courses, both integral and differential calculus.

Again, it's a half a year course, specifically for C++, but I haven't had to use the course for the last three years.

[Ben Kenobi]

Surely, since at a top college everyone would have AP in their major,

Yeah, before you get to putting me down, consider that I was the top student in my HS before going to UBC, and that I finished the IB diploma program.

So if that counts for anything, it says that I have a little bit of a broader education than someone who has devoted himself to compsci.

[Ben Kenobi]

I haven't had a course like that since first year.

Well, then your profs have a different style than the ones out at UBC.

All we had were assignments through first and second year, with an expressed avoidance of research papers.
Granted, I had to do them in the lab sessions, a paper for each lab, but not in the lectures, where we just had assignments. I don't know if the papers you are talking about are done in your lecture sessions or the labs.

I'm sure as you progress you get more, and I've helped my graduate maths student roomate with his papers, so I see that they ask more research papers as you get further along.

However, I don't really consider a research paper done in sciences to be much the same as they are in an arts class. There are big differences between the two, even if you use the same word for both.

What "science" and how far? I've written many papers in computer science, in fact...research papers are one of the most critical parts of a scientific education.

Physics and Astronomy, plus some Chem. I did best in Chem and Astronomy.

Have you looked at patents? Damn straight a huge chunk of them are lies -- especially those that require patent lawyers to defend.

Well, be sure to remember that for some of your coding when you want to be compensated for your intellectual property.

I don't proclaim to know everything about you, but I do remember you mentioning that in your thread about your construction job (that your degree didn't get you a job or a good job).

Yeah, that's because I haven't finished yet, and I want to pay off the rest of my degree so I'm not in debt.

So the fact that I don't have a job related to my degree is not the fault of the degree.

I work closely with a team at work, all they do is write. The thing is, they know what they're doing -- they're computer science graduates.

There's one or two English majors on the team, and they've been relegated to grammar checking, since they have a very hard time getting things correct...

What are they being asked to write, if I may ask? Technical reports?

I'm not surprised then that the English students are having problems. Unless they have some prior experience in the field, and some understanding of the technical side, then they are basically wasted in your company.

[Ben Kenobi]

Nonsense, take a high-level discrete mathematics course before talking about this any further.

"argument" = "statement" or "theory", and you've got yourself math.

Yes. Do you have any commentary about my point of what is considered a proper proof in mathematics at that point?

There is considerable leeway in how a proof may be constructed to the extent that should the proof meet with the approval of others in the field, it is considered proper.

[Jon Miller]

we had to write papers all the time from soph year on in my physics course (generally one paper per week per lab course)

the structure requirements were very rigorous

in fact, I had trouble writing them properly, and took mine to the writing center to get help, and they couldn't (well they thought they did, but apparently they didn't have a clue about how to write a scientific paper)

Jon Miller