

What class in college did you get the most out of? - aswanson

If you would recommend one or two classes to anyone,
what would they be?
======
german
I would not recommend any class, but surely I would recommend a few teachers,
the kind of teacher that let you think by yourself, that inspires you to
create something new. The kind of teacher that teaches you something but
encourages you to find a better way.

I think that's the point. Classes are as great as teachers make them! So find
a great teacher and you'll have your best class ever.

~~~
aswanson
The right friends do this too.

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axiom
Most useful: Linear algebra, Numerical methods, Stats and probability

Most interesting: Control systems, Abstract algebra, Real analysis, Complex
analysis

Of course my definition of "useful" is not necessarily yours. I'm much more on
the research side of things, and having a solid mathematical foundation is
absolutely essential there. My advice for taking courses in college: take
courses that you know will be useful, but you will not have the time to teach
to yourself. If you're a true nerd you will learn all the really useful stuff
on your own anyway, and you don't need university for that.

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Goladus
If I had one recommendation, it would be to keep practicing any math you learn
while in college. If you're like me, you basically had math classes every
semester from when you were 6 years old until the end of college, and you take
for granted how much you will be able to forget in 5 years without practice.

The classes I got the most out of aren't the ones I'd necessarily recommend.
Whether I got a lot out of a class depended on lot on what the rest of my
schedule looked like at the time (besides variables like professor and class
makeup). If I was taking 12 credits, I'd tend to get a lot out of all of them.
If I was taking 18 plus being a treasurer of a singing group and planning a
trip to Europe, I wouldn't learn as much.

Sometimes, I'd get a lot of knowledge out of a class, but the perspective and
wisdom wouldn't come until later. I learned how to write a fugue in '18th
century counterpoint.' Like the Zelda one on this page:

<http://www.goladus.com/music/musicpage.php>

But it wasn't until I'd been out of college a few years that I figured out how
to write a coherent piece that was longer than a minute or so (not counting
fugues, which I could still write if I wanted to).

Here's some more: <http://www.myspace.com/gadolus>

As you can see I really have no idea how to promote music. That might be
something I'd recommend a music major learn about.

Others, like Theory of Computation, I loved but because I didn't find any use
for it in the first few years after college, I forgot a lot. I still get the
basic concepts of nondeterminism and context-free grammars and such, but I'm
having to basically relearn all the useful stuff.

~~~
aswanson
>As you can see I really have no idea how to promote music.

On the other hand, unlike many people who do, you know how to _make_ music.
Serious talent. How long have you been doing it?

~~~
Goladus
I started plunking out twinkle twinkle and star wars on the organ when I was 4
or 5 or something. I started saxophone lessons in 4th grade, piano in 5th
grade. I 'wrote' one piece as an exercise while taking piano. My teacher gave
me a chord progression and I came up with a few patterns that sounded an awful
lot like the overworld music in Final Fantasy IV. I stopped piano after 9th
grade and did drama and choir instead. I sang in a Vocal Jazz ensemble, and
played sax in the Jazz band, and had lots of opportunity to improvise.

In college my introductory computer science classes were really boring and
easy, while the introductory music classes were challenging and interesting.
Sophomore year I declared a double major in Music Theory. I took composition
lessons for 1 or 2 semesters, I can't remember exactly, but I didn't get much
out of them. Two of the "Three Short Pieces for Piano" were written in
lessons. Writing for class was really hard, because I felt like I had to
please the professor, though he tried to tell me to write whatever I wanted. I
agonized over every detail, which got discouraging, because usually there was
no correct answer. I also had huge confidence problems because of the rigid,
mathematical way I thought music should be appreciated. That is, I thought
there was no way I could ever come up with anything original, and I thought
original==good.

One day a few years ago, after listening to dozens of Mozart pieces dozens of
times, hearing how amazing it was, and knowing how many people poo pooh'd
Mozart for using predictable harmonic progressions; I said 'screw it, I'm
writing a classical sonata and don't care how unoriginal it turns out to be.'
I did it because that's what I liked and that's what I wanted to write. I've
had a lot of fun since then, though I haven't made any money.

------
nostrademons
I had a bunch of courses that I really liked in college:

Tonal Harmony and Counterpoint, aka "Harmonize this melody in 4-part harmony"
- where you find that there are intricate rules to music, and what you hear on
the radio is the result of centuries of evolution in what's considered
"acceptable" music. (Or, if you listen to punk rock, the result of breaking
nearly every rule for kicks.)

Intro Geology, aka "Rocks for Jocks" (it's funny though; the English-major
jocks always struggled in this class, while us one or two physics majors were
like "pish, this is easy") - where you play with lots of rocks and go on lots
of field trips. I found it surprisingly interesting.

Sustainable Agriculture, aka "This hippy bio professor got a grant for
teaching enviro-friendly stuff" - where you learn that there is shit in the
meat, and we're all gonna starve when the oil runs out.

Also really liked my philosophy courses, General Relativity, Game Theory, and
perhaps Mathematical Logic (though I found that one really hard).

------
far33d
Operating Systems.

And if you have a chance to TA, do it. You learn a lot more by teaching than
you do by being taught.

~~~
nostrademons
I'd also recommend the other two of the "big three" computer science electives
- Compiler Design, and Computer Graphics. You can skip most of the rest of the
CS major, but no matter how good a programmer you think you are, you'll get
something out of those 3 courses.

And I'll second the bit about TAing, though my experience was in physics
rather than CS. Being a physics lab TA is cool...you get to play with all
sorts of stuff. (Heck, taking physics labs is cool, though the lab reports are
not so cool.)

~~~
aswanson
Is Statistical Mechanics worth learning?

~~~
nostrademons
It was wrapped up together with Waves, Optics, and Thermal Physics at my
college (and then I think they redid the curriculum the year after I passed
through and pulled it out). The parts that I saw definitely seemed worth
learning - you learn that pop-science concepts like entropy and temperature
actually have precise mathematical definitions in terms of the states of the
individual particles. You also learn a bunch of nifty mathematical tricks for
dealing with Really Big Numbers.

Actually, I'd probably recommend it more for someone planning to go into
finance, economics or history (!!) rather than someone going into physics or
CS, unless you're going into a subfield directly related to stat mech. Most of
my physics coursework has been basically useless for my computer programming;
yeah, it's nifty to know your vectors and rotation matrices (particularly if
you go into graphics), but I've never had to solve a volume integral or
contract a tensor since dropping my physics major.

------
brianmckenzie
History of Science.

Granted, it's not a math or CS course, but nothing has better informed the way
I think about problems, technical and political. It might as well be called
'History of Problems'.

~~~
Retric
Nod, I loved "History of Math" it traced the methods people used to solve
problems though time.

The strangest part was how interconnected mathematical understanding is with
the rest of society. EX: Try and run a bank without basic algebra.

------
ericb
I took a class titled "Entrepreneurship" when I was in college about 10 years
ago. Every other week a different entrepreneur spoke. The founder of Jolt Cola
came in and told us "we love water [as a market]--it comes out of the tap, and
you can sell it for a dollar a bottle." He also showed us one of their big-
sellers: Americola--sold ONLY in Japan, with a picture of the Statue of
Liberty on the can. That was the moment I realized how twisted marketing can
be.

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viergroupie
Theory of Computation - this was really a grab bag of discrete math. We
covered a little of automata theory, complexity, graph theory, and even
abstract algebra. The problem sets were really hard, it felt like weight-
lifting for my brain.

Molecular Biology - the material itself was a bit dry, but taken as a whole it
completely changed my understanding of life as a dynamic process.

------
Alex3917
Not a specific class, but I've really enjoyed taking the various speaker
series. These are one credit classes where we just get a different speaker
each week. This semester I'm actually taking Women & Entrepreneurship. It's
basically 60 women and me. They like having me around though so it works out.

~~~
far33d
I'm sure you like having them around more :)

------
bluishgreen
For me the best way to learn has been to do projects in the subject. Not a
class. Never. If it is new math, I need to work out some interesting problems
using it. Everything that I know I learnt on my own. Some interesting teachers
helped put the spark. But thats all teachers can do. Spark you. You have to do
the burning, for which you basically have to like learning.Just don't care
about if it is useful later or not. Thats not how knowledge is structured. Go
with the fun. If stat mech is fun, why not.

------
alex_c
Operating systems and compilers/compiler optimization.

Computer graphics, but that's not necessarily interesting/useful to everyone.

U of T has a 4th year course called "Computer Architecture" which brought
together concepts from almost all the other computer courses and which I
enjoyed immensely.

------
gills
History of Imperialism

Ethics

Remember that cheesy line from Spiderman about great power bringing great
responsibility? In the event that great intellect allows a person to attain
wealth and/or power, I would sleep better at night knowing that person
understood some past mistakes of the wealthy and powerful, and they had at
least considered some of the collective guidance of humanity.

If the question were constrained to CS, then I would say Compilers. But that's
a loaded answer, since it damn near requires a CS degree to truly appreciate
compilers.

If you want to have fun and know yourself better, take a class in art or
music.

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davidw
Italian, because I wanted to go live there. It was one of the best and most
important things in my life, as I met my wife there. Learning a language and
living "somewhere else" is a great experience - and I think the two should be
combined. Learning a language feels pointless until you have real, live people
in front of you, that you can communicate with only if you can speak their
language.

------
wyday
Linearity: You need a friendly helpful teacher for this one. The class comes
in use when you need to solve multiple iterations of a particular calculation.
For instance, triangulation is a cinch now that I've taken Linearity.

English literature: It's fun to read the classics and compare them to how
politicians and blogs cherry pick and bastardize quotes.

~~~
rickcecil
But, I would say, you have to take it with the right teacher...someone who
pushes you to find your own understanding of the literature. This usually
doesn't happen until the 300 and 400 level courses.

------
nfriedly
Patterns of leadership; without a doubt.

The programing classes I took I was correcting mistakes on the teachers test.
I know programing.

Patterns of leadership was a class about dealing with people (read 'How to Win
Friends and Influence People' for an idea of what it covered). This was a
class where I learned an incredible amount.

------
rms
I've had three full years in college now and I was thinking how sad it was
that I couldn't think of a single class that I would actually recommend to
anyone. But then I remembered that I got 3 credits for going to China for two
weeks and writing 25 pages about Lenovo with 3 other people. I would recommend
that class.

------
moonman
This class involved bantering about nothing and and absolutely everything at
the same time. It was a small class (usually 3 unique friends that I had just
met). And the format was twice a week/discussion. I think it was called: Late-
night/post party/stupid drunk/socio-political seminar 101. Take it. Seriously.

------
kirse
1) Technical Writing 2) Project Management

A tie for most useful... Both courses have been far more practical than my
actual technical capabilities. The first one taught me how to effectively
tailor my ideas to my audience, and the second taught me how to take an idea
from start to finish.

------
kingnothing
I thoroughly enjoyed Business Law, Microeconomics, and an intro to Psychology
course. Everyone should probably take psych and an economics class in order to
understand people and the world in which we live. B law was great for critical
thinking and I learned a good bit about the law as well.

------
gwenhwyfaer
I was always in the library, because I had no interest in what I was being
taught, and (I didn't realise it then, but) I couldn't bear being in a roomful
of people for lectures. I wish I'd done something like an Open University (is
there a US equivalent to this organisation?) course instead.

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henning
"Topics in X" courses where you pretty much got to do whatever you wanted and
then you wrote a report and gave a presentation about it, exploring what you
wanted to with advice from the professor.

Somewhere in there is an argument for constructionist education a la Piaget et
al.

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wlievens
My Compilers introductory course. But that's probably because I work on a
compiler in my actual job right now.

I also really enjoyed my computational geometry class.

But the first poster is right: good teachers are at least if not way more
important than interesting classes.

------
rkabir
Human Intelligence Enterprise: [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-
Engineering-and-Compute...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-
and-Computer-Science/6-803The-Human-Intelligence-
EnterpriseSpring2002/CourseHome/index.htm)

------
zaidf
My AP Eng. teacher had a one-one talk with me on day 2 of class about her
expectations--and how much I had slacked on the first homework assignment. For
once a teacher that didn't rubberstamp everything you turned in. I went from
hating English to loving that class.

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cdr
How much you get out of a class depends a lot upon the professor, I think.

I got the most out of my Software Engineering courses - Testing, Usability,
Systems, etc.

They are usually team-based, are reasonably rigorous, and have generally good
professors.

------
dfranke
Compilers; Programming Language Principles; Database Implementation.

------
altay
oil painting. taught me to look at the world in a whole different way. and
inspired me to change my major.

(i'm not saying this to win points with PG. i actually find hacking pretty
different from painting.)

more generally, stretch out into different disciplines. these days, most of
the interesting stuff happens at the intersections. plus, you'll meet a lot of
interesting folks whose paths would never cross with yours otherwise.

------
yters
A classical education instead of GE: intense reading of the classics, 6-9
hours of intense discussion/debate with your peers, & a thesis every semester.

------
leahn
Data Structures and Algebra. Data Structures hold a nice start for algorithms
and Algebra will teach you how math works, and ends with cryptography.

------
steve
Senior project, of course.

Most all of the undergraduate courses focused on _analysis_. I hated that! Let
me _design_ stuff already!

------
samb
I only went to college for 2 weeks, but I enjoyed sculpture. Everything else
seemed like a bad joke.

------
jamiequint
Advanced Microprocessor Interfacing and Communication (AKA Robotics!)

------
pramodbiligiri
I'd recommend Discrete Math, Economics, History of Science.

------
awt
Creative Non-fiction

~~~
Alex3917
After an entire semester of that class I still fail to grasp what exactly a
non-fiction essay is. So far as I could tell, it's only an essay if you write
about how your parents were alcoholics, how you were beaten as a child, or how
you live with a terrible illness. Needless to say no one liked the stuff I
wrote and I didn't do very well.

~~~
awt
I think it is just recounting "the facts" in narrative form.

------
gqgy
Introduction to Marketing and Securities Law.

------
henryw
acting 1, history of modern arts, public policy in econ, game theory in econ,
finance, and lots of math

------
creynolds
Forget the class, find the best teacher. (Just reiterating what people are
saying here) My best class was Entrepreneurship II, just because the teacher
was great and taught from personal experiences.

