It's interesting hearing this, im relearning math from basically scratch (6th grade and up, currently at 8th) I rediscovered why I used to love math until 5th grade. Self study is immensly revarding, but difficult. So I can attest to everything you say. If I manage to relearn high school math, Im thinking of going into physics or math instead of current IT degree I hold. Bad grades did have major impact on my life thats why im self studying and thinking of taking math SAT equivalent here in Europe, I had a D equivalent in math,so had to pay out of my pocket for IT degree. And low grade is bringing my average way down, on the diploma. As a sidenote calculus was hell due to my lack of undestanding of trig. Moral of my story is, don't let your gaps snowball, because they will.
Truth. I'm going back to school. My math skills are very rusty. I also need to get evaluated for a math learning disability before,I take a developmental math class. I am doing self study in developmental math book. It's never boring.
I started at square 1 as well since it was 15 years since precal. Trig's not so bad after going through a ton of examples though. My teacher told me to get an old trig book she used to teach with. With that book I was able to understand trig again, and remember all the identities that are useful for calculus.
Grades are sort of double edged. I have classes where I've gotten a+ but barely remember a thing years later while ones that I stuggled and got a lower grade stays with me for longer.
I don't think grades are about remembering what you've learned. They are there to act as evidence that shows when you had to learn something, you did, so it's likely that you can replicate it in the future.
@@zooperstar1996 I'm more saying that learning formulas, arbitrary dates in time and facts have little long term impact but look good on the GPA. This is versus learning proofs and the why of functions and operations which last longer in memory but is more tedious and doesn't always reflect well in a grade point average. :)
I have seen people who focus on learning without focusing on grades lose out on a lot of important opportunities. One must try to maintain a balance at all costs. Sadly, this system of education is such that only focusing on grades keeps you better off than only focusing on learning. One must needs do both.
@@sentientartificialintelligence Precisely. But again that's an educational problem, not a math problem. Only the institutes can deal with it. One solution to this is having open book tests instead of your classic memorize-and-vomit exams.
Grades matter more. Besides grades are a proxy for learning. An inaccurate proxy, but to get good grades you must master the subject You can tell I get bad grades at English 😅.
So far I'm getting all A's at school. A's are addictive 😄. I always believe in learning over grades. Still, I'm glad to be on both sides of the fence after doing poorly in secondary school long ago. I never stopped learning though, and I'm glad university has been better for me now 🙂 Thanks!
One thing that I think would help students, and it's something I didn't understand until long after I was out of school. A grade on a test is not an evaluation of you as a human being; for your own mental health you need to learn to view grades as measures of very narrow skills and not measures of you as a person. As you might guess, I was one of those kids who put a lot of stock in my scholastic performance, probably too much, but that's where I could shine. But it also meant that I was setting myself up for a lot of potential heartbreak.
I'm going to say focus on producing the best results you are humanly capable of producing, throw your all into the universe and the universe will throw itself into you.
I am getting wrecked right now in engineering school. It's interesting to see my much more intelligent friends going through the same struggles and they're having a difficult time too. I am not trying to worry about my GPA but to shift my focus on doing my best to survive.
Grades matter insofar as they can affect your life outcomes in positive or negative ways, at least in the short term. But in my experience they're highly arbitrary. How difficult a course can be and the overall class averages after the final exams seems to vary wildly, at least at my university. I have had courses where I basically phoned it in and really didn't learn anything but ended up with a 90 and courses where I put in enormous effort studying, even to the detriment of other courses, and got a 50. And then I find out, had I taken that same course a term earlier or later, I would have definitely earned at least an 80 with the same effort, due to a different professor/classmates/curve.
@@jcon2060 Yes, though the strength of your classmates varies a lot from term to term. If you're an average (or even above average) student in a class full of top performers then you can end up with a vary bad grade in spite of all your effort (which I believe was the case for my 50). On the other hand, if your class is full of average students then you have a much better shot at earning a really nice grade. I know for a fact that I have had some classmates in the past who had competed and won medals at the IMO. At least one of them ended up with a course grade of 100 percent at the time when I was happy to scrape by with a 50 so I didn't have to repeat the course.
@@chongli297 Right, makes sense. I only remember my grad school days haha. I do remember taking multivariate calc at undergrad with an IOI medalist who gambled and smoked weed everyday with the neighbors at my dorm. I remember him scoring the highest in the class. Really put things in perspective.
People hate this, but the fact is, grades are a good (albeit imperfect) measure of how well you've learned the material. There are cases where that correlation is low, but in general, they are the best easy metric we can come up with. You should absolutely care about grades but also recognize they are not everything. Regardless of who you are or what you're studying though, you should aim for at least a 3.0 GPA. A perfect 4.0 is unnecessary and might even reflect somewhat negatively on you because it suggests you are neurotic about grades, but less than a 3.0 (at most schools) suggests you were not a serious student or simply couldn't hack it in the program you were in. Some grad programs won't even give you credit for a course unless you get a B or better... Just something to keep in mind.
I agree with quite a few of the things that you said, but it really feels like you are making the point for: Grades are good, because we use them, which defeats the purpose. I am not proposing this (necessairily), however in all of the circumstances you mentioned they can be replaced with a ''pass'', making it a question about how can we prove that one is proficient in a subject, or find a metric (perhaps similar to grades) that always does justice for the person. I live in Greece and it's customary (with education free) to sometimes 'cut' ourselves if we don't like the grade (mind you, we are not paying for the courses or revisions of which), and that results in you actually taking it again (on your own probably) studying more and actually learning it very well, if you put the hours in, so having said that, i would much prefer something like a provisional grade, you can always take the test again while in your degree and enhance your grade, which is actually reflective of your proficiency - and in this easy way you would take a lot of pressure from a lot of people, since when courses are starting to mount it feels kind of bad to actually have to study for past courses that you ''cut''-.
I feel like in college they intervene with the outcome, as in if you work for the grades, they mean less, can't really explain this at the moment, and i mean it only partially.
I think it depends on the person. For people (like me) on the anxious end of the spectrum, focusing too much on grades (and "end goals" in general) rather than the daily process and habits causes unnecessary anxiety that affects my sleep etc. But then, I've always gotten top grades, so maybe the anxiety helps... That being said, now that I've gone back into graduate school after working for a decade, I'm trying very hard to focus on the daily process/learning, and letting the grades take care of themselves. Plus it's much more enjoyable that way too!
The problem in my opinion are not the Grades. It's the difference between humans status. As an example some have bad situations to deal with at home, some can afford private study lessons, some have bad or good backgrounds. This is a huge effect on the learning process and going through school until they start to work. Not everyone has a life where everything is perfectly set for them. This was an short hint, hope it is clear what I meant..
After my first career as a radiochemist was governed by employee evaluations, as an automation consultant, I dealt with a continuous stream of routine contract audits. Live with it. As D&D players know, rolling 18 is easy. Progressing to level 20 is godlike. (:
Thanks for the video. I'm currently in the second semester of Calculus, and it is a lot of work. My last semester was incredibly hard though, because it was 15 years since I took precalculus before that. I had to relearn everything, and spent day and night just regaining all the concepts and trying to follow my teacher. It paid off in the end, and although I'm still struggling, I'm understanding the material. I think your videos are very encouraging. I'm not perfect, I'm still trying to get it, and I'm making that effort to do well. Thanks again.
Well, there's a reason they call you a professor; you truly profess the truth. Getting good grades, developing empathy, critical thinking and people skills equals a complete package that's ready for the real world. Because the real world resembles jungle warfare and you need many different skills to survive it.
Hey math sorcerer, thanks for the video. This is something I struggle with a lot, although I've made it to the end of a B.S. in pure math. I've been the all F student and the all A student, and in both cases I felt my understanding of the topic was equal - I just couldnt express it or communicate it appropriately. Recently I've fallen in love with independent study, and I definitely feel my motivation is less when I am working on standard coursework.
Yes try your best with getting good grades guys, i m doing myy senior year of BS in Math, and i messed up really bad. My gaming addiction took over my life, I have 2.9 and I regret wasting so much time on things that doesnt matter in long run. I really hope I get into some master program and do better and maybe even go for phd. (side note: What hurts more is that I was a 4.3 gpa student in my highschool and have never struggled with school before and now i m below avg due to my stupid decisions)
I'm studying for an inferential statistics exam at the moment and I didn't realize how much I needed this. I can't thank you enough for putting this out.
Just remember that MLE has all the nice properties, and all the proves are just Chebychevs inequality, CLT, and LLN (assuming you dont have to prove those theorems, which require measure theory and Advanced analysis (dominant converge theorem etc for justifying interchanging differentiation and the expectation etc).
a man with a seat on the chicago stock exchange recommended a td trade acct which is free and technical analysis training and use of finviz to activate a chunk of capital set at a usd value with a trade acct. he said focus on one industry only and a few companies. ppl complained about paying taxes but he said pay taxes whatever because it is still a profit
Remember the Greeks (financial indicators represented by this symbolism) and Bollinger bands..in finviz graphing. He would say that it is just about how greedy you are.
Unfortunately, I lost the capacity to take grades seriously when 2 of the dumbest people I've ever met graduated in the top 10 of my class. No I'm not kidding. in high school at the very least you can get a 4.0 even if you lack all critical thinking and all the info goes in one ear and takes a few weeks to go out the other.
Some of the very smartest people literally act dumb for social reasons, since most people are dumb and dislike obviously much smarter folks. Two of the prettiest, most ditzy girls in my school were in all the smart classes, couldn't understand it until graduation and they were both in the top 10 out of about 500... They were both "hiding their light" through 4 years of high school! Turns out they were the smart ones and I was the ditz the whole time 😅
Please, enable cc. You have a good diction but sometimes I need the captions to listen some words properly. You have many others foreign followers, I suppose.
Industrial engineer fresh out of college as a straight B student. Without the pressure of exams and scores I am so excited to relearn the skills for my first engineering job pretty quickly!
I don't know why exactly anyone cares for grades. It's obvious that mediocre teacher can hardly differentiate Hubble telescope from James Hubble, so why do we give them any power over students' future?
Grades dont motivate me at all. I love learning, the act of mastering a concept is what motivates me(I study physics). This usually results in good grades anyways and I dont give a shit if someone judges me for a bad gpa when I was horribly depressed and suicidal and couldnt get out of bed most days for multiple semesters. Fuck anyone who cares about gpa rather than actually caring enough about me to find out if I know what im doing before hiring me. I know this is basically everyone but imo that just means basically everyone is a being amoral in their employment selection. Give me a test of some kind that shows ill be able to do the job rather than just looking at my gpa which is an AVERAGE. Also based on my experience tutoring university students(mostly engineers from one school), cheating is rampant enough that i'd guess about 40% of people dont properly know what they're doing when they graduate anyways, and gpa is usually not a good indicator of whether or not they do. I think even requiring a degree for almost any job is downright silly and if employers cared about people rather than profits theyd actually find good fits for the position rather than having a checklist that mostly just filters out the disadvantaged.
I wish I only liked math OR physics. Loving both permeates my study-devotion time. (Not to mention philosophy, astronomy, etc). My brain is flooded! Aahh lol
i really only started taking my own grades seriously in my sophomore year of college, i.e roundabout the time i started seriously considering grad school for physics. grades are SUPER important for grad school applications, scholarships/fellowships. do not take them lightly, especially if you're trynna get into a PhD program.
This is weird but I feel like obliged to share it ... most of successful business people I know in my surroundings had average or low grades in school. But, they're all street smart people. Life is colorful.
Personally I think that whilst not perfect, grades are the best measure of understanding of the content you're learning. And where you're taking classes that build upon the previous one's content, it's important to do as well as possible and to gain as much knowledge from your time spent there, to give yourself the best opportunity to succeed in the successive classes.
grades _can_ hinder learning. grades, points what-have-you it's discouraging. I know "boohoo, get over it" but hey don't kill the messenger. It's science!
i always tell this to my brothers/sisters in highschool. life is going to nothing short of doing tons of things you don't like. you're gonna have to wake up early when you don't want to, listen when you don't want to, learn skills or subjects you don't want to, etc. this is innate part of our world, to function in society you need to provide to get things in return. with that being said, regardless of whether or not you even choose to go to school, you're going to get a job doing something that demands the exact same things, there is no escaping it. Grades are invaluable in this sense because they imbue these skills into you, because to get good grades you need to be up early , study, learn, etc. all the time and 90% of the time you're not going to like it. but the ability to push through those things is a highly valuable trait that you can improve, and hence why it's often a measure for a professionals ability to function in their position. on the bright side remember university is awesome because you chose the thing that resonated with you the most. be proud of the skillset you embarked on to learn, you're going to be part of a group of individuals that are very good at your subject and only your subject. that's just cool dood
From my own experiences, with solid time management you can (and should!) mix indulgent learning with whatever formal curriculum you're following. Learning multiple topics in this way can really help motivate you through variety, with at least some of the topics being stuff you genuinely want to learn. Grades are good in the sense that in a career, especially a knowledge based career, you're gonna be forced to learn stuff that isn't your point of interest, and you should get used to that sooner rather than later. Great video!
Thank you for discussing this. I've been a terrible student my entire life, but I desire so much to increase my education/career from an aircraft mechanic to a mechanical engineer. I've had the impression my first failed go around of engineering school that grades and learning are almost two separate things. It's made me want to study engineering on my own because 1, I am a slow learner in these subjects, and 2, the classes I did take felt like they were shotgun courses where I learned what was needed to continue but not learning fully what the subject had to offer. Thanks to you I understand there is a balance I need to understand. I'm thankful you take the time out of your own life to be a source of information throughout many levels of math and education. I know I will refer to your videos as a good source of information as I attempt for the second time to pursue a degree in engineering.
Grades is just an incentive. Just like we work for money. Some work for enjoyment. Some go to school for enjoyment. Most just do either for the incentive which is either grades or money.
I am so underconfident about my math skills. I simply avoid talking to people who are math intelligent due to inferiority.but I feels my math is good but still. I feels like studying math then feels too dumb for it . Can you suggest some tips to overcome this
This is really interesting. Like some others here, I'm re-learning high school maths too. I used like math fine, but I fell back around 3rd grade and starting failing in 5th, and had this horrible math teacher who would gives me detention everyday for not getting geometry theorems EXACTLY right. The trauma cannot be overstated, because I memorized the theorems but memorizing how many lines they had and how many words there were in each line just to get out of detention. Hated maths ever since. Gave me headaches, so I just quit after high school and went into the social sciences, which fit me much, much better. Now I'm in graduate school, so I'm trying to diversify into economic analysis, which means I have to use math, but while self-studying I'm realising how much I enjoy statistics. It's not about the grade, it's about the pleasure of having things actually just click, work out, and make sense. The GPA is now more about like a video game where you have to stay above a certain level to stay alive, but the classes are about having fun learning and discovering.
I've thought about this alot. Do grades really matter? beacus it's an external validation that someone else hands over to you. I've been stuck alot in my life where satisifying that person is more of a must than a shock. I prefer to let grades be grades and instead put my emphasis on performance instead.
It’s too bad schools don’t move towards a competency model of learning where someone could redo tests/assignments until a certain level of competency is reached rather than - here is your final for PDE - it’s worth 70% and you only get one shot!
Grades DO matter! It got me scholarships so I got my Associate's and Bachelor's for free including books/tuition. If you make straight As they give scholarships out like candy. I often won two scholarships. Grades also is a safety buffer. You can always flunk a test so at least you have this safety buffer from previous good grades. As for GPA, people say employers do not look at it. Wrong. If a degree is required for the job, they will want your transcripts, and they want to see a GPA. Especially for high-tech jobs. They DO look for hiring. So make As -- it does pay off.
@@TheMathSorcerer alright because I'm trying my best with this excel, access class that is basically self teaching coding and man with everything that's happening I'll probably walk away with a b something.
Grades are a construct believed to be a linear measurement with the attempt to measure a non-linear learning process. W.E. Deming objected essentially saying any measurement is useful as long as its limitations are understood and observed. For college drop outs like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs you are in good company and showing how the grade system is a clear failure. Feeling good about good grades is like winning the lottery - quite empty in the end.
For the first reason of yours, I think it's pretty invalid. Grades are almost always far from the truth about you as a student and as a person. They're an extremely broad and unrealistic way to judge the qualities of a student and most education systems tend to keep track of all your grades, which only makes the student feel more pressure as to how many times they have to go out of their way to get good grades. This should be seen as a negative, not as "grades matter because they are grades". That GPA score is nothing more than what you got during your student years. It is nowhere close to who you are as a person and a worker by the time you go and look for a job. Unfortunately, our society thinks otherwise, but compliance with society's negative standards shouldn't be seen as a positive. For the second reason, grades are really not a good way to get a sense of accomplishment. Accomplishment should be gained during the learning process. When the teacher talks about a new subject that involves previous knowledge and you don't need him to explain how those connect, you get a sense of accomplishment for your success in previous classes. You get that sense every time you finish your homework, or a test in which you know you wrote well, or when hearing your teacher talk about your performance. You get a sense of accomplishment for participating in class, learning from your mistakes and obtaining knowledge. A bunch of numbers on a paper only give a fake sense of accomplishment that really doesn't mean anything. Lots of students from my classes got great grades. Their knowledge and attitude in class proves they didn't deserve them though. I say this all as a class topper in every single maths class I'm attending (calc1) with perfect grades from the end of our last semester. I hope I am understood and my criticism isn't taken negatively.
There's a prestigious university in my area whose grade policy for acceptance and transfers is the average mark for the last five times you took that class. I took grade 12 English three times to pass it, and I got a pretty good maximum grade. But that average is below 50, so I was ineligible to apply to that university.
This is a nice video,really .Grades make me stressed the whole semester because I should revise and do a lot of math problems to get a good mark which is tiring most of the time. Here is something I always struggle with and I hope you make a video about it because I really need help. To get a good grade,I should study hard(solve different math problems in a short time) .Most of the time, I find myself stuck in a problem and this is great - you would say - because math is all about thinking and trying to find a solution. BUT if I spend hours on that problem ,it would be a waste of time you know ?.So seeing the answer key and moving on to another problem would be better ...I don't know is this a good method. Am I memorizing answers in this case?? Am I doing the "right" math?? When should I see the answer key ? Thank you🌹
I'm 23. I dropped out of college because I scored very very low and failed in two subjects out of 6 in my 1st year because I was not focusing at all on studying, maybe I lost interest in studying because of bad teaching techniques of professors or maybe I was got interested in some new stuff like poetry and music. But I really want to study Maths and Science, specially Physics, and want yo work on problems and ideas which I came across back when I was in Highschool. I want to work on current problems physics is facing and understand the world (Universe) around me. I don't want to be in a University class for my study and I want to study on my own. So if you could advise me on how should I study, where to start with, or how to choose good books and where to find them (because I live in a place where there are no good Libraries), and so on...
I do see why having a good grade is very attractive to students I also understand that society is flawed and is wrong those in power Have an interest in misguideing society. getting a good grade is not equivalent to the real World success so the real question is why does society uphold those labels what is the intentions behind that. The A student will always work for the C students they always have and they always will.
It's great channel I am a civil engineer but i forgot all math courses i studied 😂 because i change my career. Now i back to civil engineering community i wanna to study MSC in strucral engineering. also i wanna to study mathematics from beginning by self study Can i study civil engineering msc in college and mathematics together? Thanks
Grades also work as a way to criticize yourself, if you have a bad grade you will know that you have to study in a different way because the way you are studying may not be the right one!.
I had said this in a precal class when the teacher asked, "what is a grade?" - taking school again in 2020 only proved it even further when every question I asked was never answered by anyone, teacher, student, tutor.com, or otherwise: "Grades are a reflection of the quality of the teacher." 0:28 Grades do hinder learning, insofar as educrats and very bad teachers place trick questions on tests which do nothing to educate or convey any information at all other than the idea that "we're not going to let you make an A no matter how hard you try." So, instead of educating, we're playing "Keep Away" with the actual information we're supposed to be supplying in an educational setting. Obviously, any who do this, which are way too many to remain as unaddressed as it currently is, aren't included in the set of real educators, but rather in the set of those playing games with people's lives. Fortunately, there is a high cost for playing these games that is exacted in the future.
It's interesting hearing this, im relearning math from basically scratch (6th grade and up, currently at 8th) I rediscovered why I used to love math until 5th grade. Self study is immensly revarding, but difficult. So I can attest to everything you say. If I manage to relearn high school math, Im thinking of going into physics or math instead of current IT degree I hold. Bad grades did have major impact on my life thats why im self studying and thinking of taking math SAT equivalent here in Europe, I had a D equivalent in math,so had to pay out of my pocket for IT degree. And low grade is bringing my average way down, on the diploma. As a sidenote calculus was hell due to my lack of undestanding of trig. Moral of my story is, don't let your gaps snowball, because they will.
Truth. I'm going back to school. My math skills are very rusty. I also need to get evaluated for a math learning disability before,I take a developmental math class. I am doing self study in developmental math book. It's never boring.
I started at square 1 as well since it was 15 years since precal. Trig's not so bad after going through a ton of examples though. My teacher told me to get an old trig book she used to teach with. With that book I was able to understand trig again, and remember all the identities that are useful for calculus.
Yes we should learn to our selfs
Learn to enjoy
Hell of an accomplishment, keep grinding and don’t give up.
Grades are sort of double edged. I have classes where I've gotten a+ but barely remember a thing years later while ones that I stuggled and got a lower grade stays with me for longer.
I don't think grades are about remembering what you've learned. They are there to act as evidence that shows when you had to learn something, you did, so it's likely that you can replicate it in the future.
@@zooperstar1996 I'm more saying that learning formulas, arbitrary dates in time and facts have little long term impact but look good on the GPA. This is versus learning proofs and the why of functions and operations which last longer in memory but is more tedious and doesn't always reflect well in a grade point average. :)
I know that grade matters. But I hate that grade matters.
I have seen people who focus on learning without focusing on grades lose out on a lot of important opportunities. One must try to maintain a balance at all costs. Sadly, this system of education is such that only focusing on grades keeps you better off than only focusing on learning. One must needs do both.
Totally agree!
@@sentientartificialintelligence Precisely. But again that's an educational problem, not a math problem. Only the institutes can deal with it. One solution to this is having open book tests instead of your classic memorize-and-vomit exams.
Grades matter more. Besides grades are a proxy for learning. An inaccurate proxy, but to get good grades you must master the subject
You can tell I get bad grades at English 😅.
So far I'm getting all A's at school. A's are addictive 😄. I always believe in learning over grades. Still, I'm glad to be on both sides of the fence after doing poorly in secondary school long ago. I never stopped learning though, and I'm glad university has been better for me now 🙂 Thanks!
One thing that I think would help students, and it's something I didn't understand until long after I was out of school. A grade on a test is not an evaluation of you as a human being; for your own mental health you need to learn to view grades as measures of very narrow skills and not measures of you as a person. As you might guess, I was one of those kids who put a lot of stock in my scholastic performance, probably too much, but that's where I could shine. But it also meant that I was setting myself up for a lot of potential heartbreak.
I'm going to say focus on producing the best results you are humanly capable of producing, throw your all into the universe and the universe will throw itself into you.
I am getting wrecked right now in engineering school. It's interesting to see my much more intelligent friends going through the same struggles and they're having a difficult time too. I am not trying to worry about my GPA but to shift my focus on doing my best to survive.
Good luck 👍
Grades matter insofar as they can affect your life outcomes in positive or negative ways, at least in the short term. But in my experience they're highly arbitrary. How difficult a course can be and the overall class averages after the final exams seems to vary wildly, at least at my university. I have had courses where I basically phoned it in and really didn't learn anything but ended up with a 90 and courses where I put in enormous effort studying, even to the detriment of other courses, and got a 50. And then I find out, had I taken that same course a term earlier or later, I would have definitely earned at least an 80 with the same effort, due to a different professor/classmates/curve.
Profs usually grade on a scale, though. So the relative performance is what matters usually.
@@jcon2060 Yes, though the strength of your classmates varies a lot from term to term. If you're an average (or even above average) student in a class full of top performers then you can end up with a vary bad grade in spite of all your effort (which I believe was the case for my 50). On the other hand, if your class is full of average students then you have a much better shot at earning a really nice grade. I know for a fact that I have had some classmates in the past who had competed and won medals at the IMO. At least one of them ended up with a course grade of 100 percent at the time when I was happy to scrape by with a 50 so I didn't have to repeat the course.
@@chongli297 Right, makes sense. I only remember my grad school days haha. I do remember taking multivariate calc at undergrad with an IOI medalist who gambled and smoked weed everyday with the neighbors at my dorm. I remember him scoring the highest in the class. Really put things in perspective.
I passed calc 3 right on the minimum acceptable score and it was one of the best days of my life
I also want to learn freely without taking stress because of grades... But grades do matter so much.....
People hate this, but the fact is, grades are a good (albeit imperfect) measure of how well you've learned the material. There are cases where that correlation is low, but in general, they are the best easy metric we can come up with. You should absolutely care about grades but also recognize they are not everything. Regardless of who you are or what you're studying though, you should aim for at least a 3.0 GPA. A perfect 4.0 is unnecessary and might even reflect somewhat negatively on you because it suggests you are neurotic about grades, but less than a 3.0 (at most schools) suggests you were not a serious student or simply couldn't hack it in the program you were in. Some grad programs won't even give you credit for a course unless you get a B or better... Just something to keep in mind.
Grades might matter in college. In grad school, you’re assumed to have moved past that, usually. At least in the good schools?
I agree with quite a few of the things that you said, but it really feels like you are making the point for: Grades are good, because we use them, which defeats the purpose. I am not proposing this (necessairily), however in all of the circumstances you mentioned they can be replaced with a ''pass'', making it a question about how can we prove that one is proficient in a subject, or find a metric (perhaps similar to grades) that always does justice for the person.
I live in Greece and it's customary (with education free) to sometimes 'cut' ourselves if we don't like the grade (mind you, we are not paying for the courses or revisions of which), and that results in you actually taking it again (on your own probably) studying more and actually learning it very well, if you put the hours in, so having said that, i would much prefer something like a provisional grade, you can always take the test again while in your degree and enhance your grade, which is actually reflective of your proficiency - and in this easy way you would take a lot of pressure from a lot of people, since when courses are starting to mount it feels kind of bad to actually have to study for past courses that you ''cut''-.
I feel like in college they intervene with the outcome, as in if you work for the grades, they mean less, can't really explain this at the moment, and i mean it only partially.
I think it depends on the person. For people (like me) on the anxious end of the spectrum, focusing too much on grades (and "end goals" in general) rather than the daily process and habits causes unnecessary anxiety that affects my sleep etc. But then, I've always gotten top grades, so maybe the anxiety helps...
That being said, now that I've gone back into graduate school after working for a decade, I'm trying very hard to focus on the daily process/learning, and letting the grades take care of themselves. Plus it's much more enjoyable that way too!
The problem in my opinion are not the Grades. It's the difference between humans status. As an example some have bad situations to deal with at home, some can afford private study lessons, some have bad or good backgrounds. This is a huge effect on the learning process and going through school until they start to work. Not everyone has a life where everything is perfectly set for them. This was an short hint, hope it is clear what I meant..
very clear, thank you for your comment!!
After my first career as a radiochemist was governed by employee evaluations, as an automation consultant, I dealt with a continuous stream of routine contract audits. Live with it.
As D&D players know, rolling 18 is easy. Progressing to level 20 is godlike.
(:
Thanks for the video. I'm currently in the second semester of Calculus, and it is a lot of work. My last semester was incredibly hard though, because it was 15 years since I took precalculus before that. I had to relearn everything, and spent day and night just regaining all the concepts and trying to follow my teacher. It paid off in the end, and although I'm still struggling, I'm understanding the material. I think your videos are very encouraging. I'm not perfect, I'm still trying to get it, and I'm making that effort to do well. Thanks again.
The thumbnail is HILARIOUS!
Great video! Thanks!
Liked the way you signed out... "Go do some math!"
Lol
😁
Meanwhile me barley passing geometry.
Well, there's a reason they call you a professor; you truly profess the truth. Getting good grades, developing empathy, critical thinking and people skills equals a complete package that's ready for the real world. Because the real world resembles jungle warfare and you need many different skills to survive it.
Hey math sorcerer, thanks for the video. This is something I struggle with a lot, although I've made it to the end of a B.S. in pure math. I've been the all F student and the all A student, and in both cases I felt my understanding of the topic was equal - I just couldnt express it or communicate it appropriately. Recently I've fallen in love with independent study, and I definitely feel my motivation is less when I am working on standard coursework.
Yes try your best with getting good grades guys, i m doing myy senior year of BS in Math, and i messed up really bad. My gaming addiction took over my life, I have 2.9 and I regret wasting so much time on things that doesnt matter in long run. I really hope I get into some master program and do better and maybe even go for phd. (side note: What hurts more is that I was a 4.3 gpa student in my highschool and have never struggled with school before and now i m below avg due to my stupid decisions)
I'm studying for an inferential statistics exam at the moment and I didn't realize how much I needed this. I can't thank you enough for putting this out.
Just remember that MLE has all the nice properties, and all the proves are just Chebychevs inequality, CLT, and LLN (assuming you dont have to prove those theorems, which require measure theory and Advanced analysis (dominant converge theorem etc for justifying interchanging differentiation and the expectation etc).
a man with a seat on the chicago stock exchange recommended a td trade acct which is free and technical analysis training and use of finviz to activate a chunk of capital set at a usd value with a trade acct. he said focus on one industry only and a few companies. ppl complained about paying taxes but he said pay taxes whatever because it is still a profit
Remember the Greeks (financial indicators represented by this symbolism) and Bollinger bands..in finviz graphing. He would say that it is just about how greedy you are.
Computer science major here. GPA has never come up in my job interviews.
LOL I loved the ending "good luck, go do some math"
"Who grades the grader?"
This channel (you) always have such an interesting analysis of your topics. Thank you!
I appreciate that!
Unfortunately, I lost the capacity to take grades seriously when 2 of the dumbest people I've ever met graduated in the top 10 of my class. No I'm not kidding. in high school at the very least you can get a 4.0 even if you lack all critical thinking and all the info goes in one ear and takes a few weeks to go out the other.
naw i feel you, a lot of people cheat/brown nose to an astounding level, i dont have that motivation when it comes to grades
Some of the very smartest people literally act dumb for social reasons, since most people are dumb and dislike obviously much smarter folks.
Two of the prettiest, most ditzy girls in my school were in all the smart classes, couldn't understand it until graduation and they were both in the top 10 out of about 500... They were both "hiding their light" through 4 years of high school!
Turns out they were the smart ones and I was the ditz the whole time 😅
Please, enable cc. You have a good diction but sometimes I need the captions to listen some words properly. You have many others foreign followers, I suppose.
Industrial engineer fresh out of college as a straight B student. Without the pressure of exams and scores I am so excited to relearn the skills for my first engineering job pretty quickly!
I don't know why exactly anyone cares for grades. It's obvious that mediocre teacher can hardly differentiate Hubble telescope from James Hubble, so why do we give them any power over students' future?
"Good luck. Go do some math."
I am better off hearing this call to action
singapore math is neat. indian math instruction is very iconic
"Good luck. Go do some math."
I´m on it!
:)
Grades dont motivate me at all. I love learning, the act of mastering a concept is what motivates me(I study physics). This usually results in good grades anyways and I dont give a shit if someone judges me for a bad gpa when I was horribly depressed and suicidal and couldnt get out of bed most days for multiple semesters. Fuck anyone who cares about gpa rather than actually caring enough about me to find out if I know what im doing before hiring me. I know this is basically everyone but imo that just means basically everyone is a being amoral in their employment selection. Give me a test of some kind that shows ill be able to do the job rather than just looking at my gpa which is an AVERAGE. Also based on my experience tutoring university students(mostly engineers from one school), cheating is rampant enough that i'd guess about 40% of people dont properly know what they're doing when they graduate anyways, and gpa is usually not a good indicator of whether or not they do. I think even requiring a degree for almost any job is downright silly and if employers cared about people rather than profits theyd actually find good fits for the position rather than having a checklist that mostly just filters out the disadvantaged.
I wish I only liked math OR physics. Loving both permeates my study-devotion time. (Not to mention philosophy, astronomy, etc). My brain is flooded! Aahh lol
i really only started taking my own grades seriously in my sophomore year of college, i.e roundabout the time i started seriously considering grad school for physics.
grades are SUPER important for grad school applications, scholarships/fellowships. do not take them lightly, especially if you're trynna get into a PhD program.
This is weird but I feel like obliged to share it ... most of successful business people I know in my surroundings had average or low grades in school. But, they're all street smart people. Life is colorful.
It is true that experimentation and failure lead to better understanding.
Personally I think that whilst not perfect, grades are the best measure of understanding of the content you're learning. And where you're taking classes that build upon the previous one's content, it's important to do as well as possible and to gain as much knowledge from your time spent there, to give yourself the best opportunity to succeed in the successive classes.
Also, grades are unbiased (in theory) and can reveal weak areas what are hard to identify with self reflection when self studying.
grades _can_ hinder learning.
grades, points what-have-you it's discouraging.
I know "boohoo, get over it" but hey
don't kill the messenger.
It's science!
Last year in college I got 4 Bs, 2 Cs, and 6 As. How bad is this?
That’s pretty good to be honest. I mean it’s not bad and it’s mostly A’s and B’s
i always tell this to my brothers/sisters in highschool. life is going to nothing short of doing tons of things you don't like. you're gonna have to wake up early when you don't want to, listen when you don't want to, learn skills or subjects you don't want to, etc. this is innate part of our world, to function in society you need to provide to get things in return. with that being said, regardless of whether or not you even choose to go to school, you're going to get a job doing something that demands the exact same things, there is no escaping it. Grades are invaluable in this sense because they imbue these skills into you, because to get good grades you need to be up early , study, learn, etc. all the time and 90% of the time you're not going to like it. but the ability to push through those things is a highly valuable trait that you can improve, and hence why it's often a measure for a professionals ability to function in their position. on the bright side remember university is awesome because you chose the thing that resonated with you the most. be proud of the skillset you embarked on to learn, you're going to be part of a group of individuals that are very good at your subject and only your subject. that's just cool dood
That was a super talk MS! I will study better thanks to you
From my own experiences, with solid time management you can (and should!) mix indulgent learning with whatever formal curriculum you're following. Learning multiple topics in this way can really help motivate you through variety, with at least some of the topics being stuff you genuinely want to learn. Grades are good in the sense that in a career, especially a knowledge based career, you're gonna be forced to learn stuff that isn't your point of interest, and you should get used to that sooner rather than later.
Great video!
Thank you for discussing this. I've been a terrible student my entire life, but I desire so much to increase my education/career from an aircraft mechanic to a mechanical engineer. I've had the impression my first failed go around of engineering school that grades and learning are almost two separate things. It's made me want to study engineering on my own because 1, I am a slow learner in these subjects, and 2, the classes I did take felt like they were shotgun courses where I learned what was needed to continue but not learning fully what the subject had to offer. Thanks to you I understand there is a balance I need to understand. I'm thankful you take the time out of your own life to be a source of information throughout many levels of math and education. I know I will refer to your videos as a good source of information as I attempt for the second time to pursue a degree in engineering.
Grades is just an incentive. Just like we work for money. Some work for enjoyment. Some go to school for enjoyment. Most just do either for the incentive which is either grades or money.
Thanks for all the things you do on internet, it's awesome the way yo can help people just by listen your speech =)
I am so underconfident about my math skills. I simply avoid talking to people who are math intelligent due to inferiority.but I feels my math is good but still. I feels like studying math then feels too dumb for it . Can you suggest some tips to overcome this
This is really interesting. Like some others here, I'm re-learning high school maths too. I used like math fine, but I fell back around 3rd grade and starting failing in 5th, and had this horrible math teacher who would gives me detention everyday for not getting geometry theorems EXACTLY right. The trauma cannot be overstated, because I memorized the theorems but memorizing how many lines they had and how many words there were in each line just to get out of detention. Hated maths ever since. Gave me headaches, so I just quit after high school and went into the social sciences, which fit me much, much better. Now I'm in graduate school, so I'm trying to diversify into economic analysis, which means I have to use math, but while self-studying I'm realising how much I enjoy statistics. It's not about the grade, it's about the pleasure of having things actually just click, work out, and make sense. The GPA is now more about like a video game where you have to stay above a certain level to stay alive, but the classes are about having fun learning and discovering.
I've thought about this alot. Do grades really matter? beacus it's an external validation that someone else hands over to you. I've been stuck alot in my life where satisifying that person is more of a must than a shock. I prefer to let grades be grades and instead put my emphasis on performance instead.
It’s too bad schools don’t move towards a competency model of learning where someone could redo tests/assignments until a certain level of competency is reached rather than - here is your final for PDE - it’s worth 70% and you only get one shot!
It's really an eye opening video and a new perspective to look at grades. Some of the points really hit hard to me 🙏😀
Matemáticas es difícil.
Having to give/receive grades is bad. Not having grades is worse.
Grades DO matter! It got me scholarships so I got my Associate's and Bachelor's for free including books/tuition. If you make straight As they give scholarships out like candy. I often won two scholarships. Grades also is a safety buffer. You can always flunk a test so at least you have this safety buffer from previous good grades. As for GPA, people say employers do not look at it. Wrong. If a degree is required for the job, they will want your transcripts, and they want to see a GPA. Especially for high-tech jobs. They DO look for hiring. So make As -- it does pay off.
Thank you, sir! I will certainly do math!
Will B's be ok?
Yeah they are better than C's:) I had a few B's.
@@TheMathSorcerer alright because I'm trying my best with this excel, access class that is basically self teaching coding and man with everything that's happening I'll probably walk away with a b something.
I learn applied mathematics but when exams approach, I'm forced to study pure mathematics and it fills in the gaps in my knowledge
Grades are a construct believed to be a linear measurement with the attempt to measure a non-linear learning process. W.E. Deming objected essentially saying any measurement is useful as long as its limitations are understood and observed. For college drop outs like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs you are in good company and showing how the grade system is a clear failure. Feeling good about good grades is like winning the lottery - quite empty in the end.
For the first reason of yours, I think it's pretty invalid. Grades are almost always far from the truth about you as a student and as a person. They're an extremely broad and unrealistic way to judge the qualities of a student and most education systems tend to keep track of all your grades, which only makes the student feel more pressure as to how many times they have to go out of their way to get good grades. This should be seen as a negative, not as "grades matter because they are grades".
That GPA score is nothing more than what you got during your student years. It is nowhere close to who you are as a person and a worker by the time you go and look for a job. Unfortunately, our society thinks otherwise, but compliance with society's negative standards shouldn't be seen as a positive.
For the second reason, grades are really not a good way to get a sense of accomplishment. Accomplishment should be gained during the learning process. When the teacher talks about a new subject that involves previous knowledge and you don't need him to explain how those connect, you get a sense of accomplishment for your success in previous classes. You get that sense every time you finish your homework, or a test in which you know you wrote well, or when hearing your teacher talk about your performance. You get a sense of accomplishment for participating in class, learning from your mistakes and obtaining knowledge. A bunch of numbers on a paper only give a fake sense of accomplishment that really doesn't mean anything.
Lots of students from my classes got great grades. Their knowledge and attitude in class proves they didn't deserve them though.
I say this all as a class topper in every single maths class I'm attending (calc1) with perfect grades from the end of our last semester. I hope I am understood and my criticism isn't taken negatively.
There's a prestigious university in my area whose grade policy for acceptance and transfers is the average mark for the last five times you took that class. I took grade 12 English three times to pass it, and I got a pretty good maximum grade. But that average is below 50, so I was ineligible to apply to that university.
Thanks professor please have online classes
This is a nice video,really .Grades make me stressed the whole semester because I should revise and do a lot of math problems to get a good mark which is tiring most of the time. Here is something I always struggle with and I hope you make a video about it because I really need help.
To get a good grade,I should study hard(solve different math problems in a short time) .Most of the time, I find myself stuck in a problem and this is great - you would say - because math is all about thinking and trying to find a solution. BUT if I spend hours on that problem ,it would be a waste of time you know ?.So seeing the answer key and moving on to another problem would be better ...I don't know is this a good method. Am I memorizing answers in this case?? Am I doing the "right" math?? When should I see the answer key ? Thank you🌹
I'm 23. I dropped out of college because I scored very very low and failed in two subjects out of 6 in my 1st year because I was not focusing at all on studying, maybe I lost interest in studying because of bad teaching techniques of professors or maybe I was got interested in some new stuff like poetry and music.
But I really want to study Maths and Science, specially Physics, and want yo work on problems and ideas which I came across back when I was in Highschool. I want to work on current problems physics is facing and understand the world (Universe) around me.
I don't want to be in a University class for my study and I want to study on my own.
So if you could advise me on how should I study, where to start with, or how to choose good books and where to find them (because I live in a place where there are no good Libraries), and so on...
I do see why having a good grade is very attractive to students
I also understand that society is flawed and is wrong those in power Have an interest in misguideing society. getting a good grade is not equivalent to the real World success so the real question is why does society uphold those labels what is the intentions behind that.
The A student will always work for the C students they always have and they always will.
I'm failing my entire advanced algebra advanced class what should I do?
It's great channel
I am a civil engineer
but i forgot all math courses i studied 😂
because i change my career.
Now i back to civil engineering community i wanna to study MSC in strucral engineering.
also i wanna to study mathematics from beginning by self study
Can i study civil engineering msc in college and mathematics together?
Thanks
They don't matter in engineering, everyone fails
Grades also work as a way to criticize yourself, if you have a bad grade you will know that you have to study in a different way because the way you are studying may not be the right one!.
AGREEDDDDDDDDDDD
"The REAL Reason Why Grades Matter"
-They are not.
Thank you for watching :P
❤️💯✅
tautology is true because all tautologies are true (re: point 1 lol)
Well I don't buy the perfect system you are preaching.
That is Jeff Bezos!
One time I didnt answer a single question and got an A
Grades matter so that you can brag about them.
Give me money to study 😘
I had said this in a precal class when the teacher asked, "what is a grade?" - taking school again in 2020 only proved it even further when every question I asked was never answered by anyone, teacher, student, tutor.com, or otherwise: "Grades are a reflection of the quality of the teacher." 0:28 Grades do hinder learning, insofar as educrats and very bad teachers place trick questions on tests which do nothing to educate or convey any information at all other than the idea that "we're not going to let you make an A no matter how hard you try." So, instead of educating, we're playing "Keep Away" with the actual information we're supposed to be supplying in an educational setting. Obviously, any who do this, which are way too many to remain as unaddressed as it currently is, aren't included in the set of real educators, but rather in the set of those playing games with people's lives. Fortunately, there is a high cost for playing these games that is exacted in the future.