MITx Differential Equations starts May 31
57 points by drhodes 2 years ago | 26 comments- drhodes 2 years agoHey everyone, if you would like to get a grip on differential equations and are willing to put in the work, then you should know that an instructor paced run starts on May 31st. If you know single variable calculus then you're set to jet! Please sign up here:
https://mitxonline.mit.edu/courses/course-v1:MITxT+18.03.1x/
Incidentally, the prerequisite: 18.01x, also starts on May 31.
https://mitxonline.mit.edu/courses/course-v1:MITxT+18.01.1x/
- ianai 2 years agoIn this sort of situation is the homework graded and the usual? Or is the sign up just so someone can watch the video?
- drhodes 2 years agoThere are homeworks as well as lecture exercises, recitations and a final exam. As far as grading, there is an auto grader that uses sympy on the backend.
- drhodes 2 years ago
- EddieEngineers 2 years agoThanks, signing up! :)
- ianai 2 years ago
- naillo 2 years agoIt's funny how differential equations just boil down to plain linear algebra when you restrict yourself to the discrete time domain setting. I feel like courses like this should lead with that to save time for people who will primarily handle them inside computers.
- iamcreasy 2 years agoI took a traditional differential equation course, and a separate linear algebra course. Loved both of them.
Do you know any course/book to connect this two courses?
- selimthegrim 2 years agoStrang has one although it kind of buried the lede on the linear algebra in my opinion. Try some of the older DE texts (Coddington) or an older Schaum’s outline
- selimthegrim 2 years ago
- zeroonetwothree 2 years agoIn my college linear algebra was a prereq for diff eq for this reason
- kstrauser 2 years ago“Just”.
I suspect that an MIT course would be more interesting than “here’s the class in one sentence. See you next semester!”
- ok123456 2 years agoHe's not wrong. It just takes a semester or two to get there.
- ghaff 2 years agoAs I recall from a (very) long ago differential equations course at MIT, the intro DiffEQ course was very cookbook and, while necessary for some things like system dynamics, weren't super-interesting. (Not that I was ever very good at math.) I did always think it was cool though that you had "imaginary" i terms and they eventually disappeared and you had a real-world result.
Never took linear algebra but I gather it was embedded in other courses in various guises largely pre-computer.
- ghaff 2 years ago
- ok123456 2 years ago
- iamcreasy 2 years ago
- osigurdson 2 years agoI always thought that math was super well curated…right up until differential equations. Beautiful calculus and linear algebra, followed by a bag of tricks to solve DEs.
- dimatura 2 years agoAs someone who is better at coding than pen & paper math, I definitely enjoyed seeing a lot more cases where the only practical solution was numerical.
- paulpauper 2 years agoDifferential equations are way more involved and broad.
- dimatura 2 years ago
- the__alchemist 2 years agoHey, unrelated: Does anyone know why it seems MITx stopped offering new courses ~5 years ago? I'm still bummed out and check their page a few times a year.
(I can vouch for this class and the 2x2 one btw; great stuff; I'd recommend any of their math and science courses. The QM ones are especially good)
- drhodes 2 years agoWell, the multivariable calculus series was released more recently. Work is ongoing for the 3rd part of that series.
- drhodes 2 years ago
- qumpis 2 years agoAre there any interesting modern applications of diff. equations in computer science outside physics simulators, and 3d vision? Or some adjacent areas that would benefit from skillset of working with diff. equations?
- pumanoir 2 years agoOptimization by gradient descent is used to do the learning in deep learning. For example, diff eqs are used to create optimizers that improve upon the classic 'adam' say, such as the new 'sophia' [1]. 1. https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.14342
- pumanoir 2 years ago
- oh_sigh 2 years agoThis seems like an ad. I assumed the course would be free, but it is $100.
- ayhanfuat 2 years agoYou can sign up for free. The paid option offers a certificate. That seems to be the only difference.
- ayhanfuat 2 years ago
- stackedinserter 2 years agoI guess it's $100 for a bunch of videos of lecturer scratching on a whiteboard something that you can learn yourself with interactive demos, sympy and a jupiter notebook.
- falcor84 2 years agoAny recommendations about a good set of tutorial notebooks based on sympy?
I found a couple of tutorials, but they're about using sympy rather than the theory, and they aren't actually notebooks:
https://www.sympy.org/scipy-2017-codegen-tutorial/notebooks/...
https://www.cfm.brown.edu/people/dobrush/am33/SymPy/index.ht...
- drhodes 2 years agoThe difference is that there are also a bunch of other people learning the same thing at the same time. Peer pressure as well as due dates helps people stay on track, and there is support on the forum in case you get stuck, or just want to talk about something cool you found related to differential equations or math.
- paulpauper 2 years agolol isn't that any course? sure cheaper than full tuition
- falcor84 2 years ago
- analognoise 2 years agoAre we signing up as a group and going to form a discussion somewhere?
I've wanted to redo differential equations so I could buy an Analog Thing...
- drhodes 2 years agoHi, there is a integrated discussion forum with latex support.
- drhodes 2 years ago