Timeline for Should there be a specified standard knowledge of mathematicians?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
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| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 12, 2011 at 2:10 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by S. Carnahan♦ | ||
| Feb 23, 2011 at 8:30 | comment | added | Peter Samuelson | I can't compare Cornell's approach to qualifying exams (since I've never taken any), but one thing I can say is that the required courses were quite time-consuming. For me, at least, the probability that I remember something is proportional to how often I use it, so I think that even if I had learned, say, Arzela-Ascoli for an exam instead of for a class, the fact that I have never had occasion to use it since then means that I don't remember its statement. | |
| Feb 23, 2011 at 4:04 | comment | added | Thierry Zell | @Pete: I am not sure that I share your faith in qualifiers. (Of course, I've only been on the receiving end of those, I am sure the perspective is very different from your end.) Purdue, like many other school, has an online repository of old qualifiers, and the real analysis one always had a reputation as the toughest. If you look at the exams, it is really difficult to believe they are all from the same syllabus! E.g: I had to know Borel-Cantelli for my qual, other years could make do without. So there is a very definite limit as to how much standardized knowledge quals can bring. | |
| Feb 23, 2011 at 3:29 | vote | accept | Pierre | ||
| Feb 23, 2011 at 3:34 | |||||
| Feb 23, 2011 at 3:18 | history | answered | Pete L. Clark | CC BY-SA 2.5 |