In which the author rants about Finite Mathematics.

Getting up at 7am is much harder than I expected. I overslept today -- the alarm went off at 7, only to have me immediately turn it off and sleep until 8:30. I guess I needed it, although as far as I can tell it hasn't helped me get anything more done. Not a good week for work.

I took my car in to be serviced yesterday, and after much angst paid a rental place to drive around a hideous Geo Metro that had steering from hell. Getting my Saturn back was nothing short of paradise. I must never take my car for granted again.

Monday night was my first day of classes, and as it turns out Finite Mathematics sucks rocks -- or, rather, this particular interpretation of it does. The instructor is a very nice woman, who spent a good hour explaining to us just how important it is that our homework be neat. And pretty. And that we write our names clearly. Oh, she also explained that this is a laid-back low-stress sort of class, so nobody should worry about it too much.

After class I wander up to her desk and say very hopefully, "So what exactly are we covering?"

To which she replies, "We're doing matrices, and mathematics of finance -- oh, we'll spend a lot of time on the mathematics of finance, since nearly everyone in this class is a business major -- and then we'll do linear programming. If we've still got time after that we might look at the other chapters, but I doubt we will."

Calm, I think. I must be calm. So I say, "What about the set theory and combinatorics? Are we doing any of that?"

She looks confused, but manages a smile. "No, of course not. That's covered in statistics. Besides, we won't have time for more than these three sections, really."

Augh.

You see, the reason I took this class is that, according to the description in the course catalogue, it covered set theory, basic combinatorics, basic probability, Markov chains, and a few other neat things. Linear programming and matrices are neat. Mathematics of finance is calculating compound interest in various ways, leading up to e. That's it. She plans for her class to spend _a third of the quarter_ learning how to calculate compound interest. That took us, what, three days in my Pre-Calc class this summer?

I'm quietly outraged. Not really at her, because she seems like such a nice person, and the people in the class are clearly going to appreciate her taking things so slowly, and maybe by the end of it they'll be business majors with an understanding of the mathematics of finance. Maybe. But I'm not a business major, and I was taking this class because it promised to give me a lot of pieces that I'd need for Discrete Math. Instead... well. I'm going to sit in on Statistics tonight and see if it's any better.