Well I'd get your calculus and statistics out of the way since they are the easiest on your list having taken all these classes myself.
Not to mention if you decide to change your major for any reason most others require stats at least and maybe calc so you won't be wasting your time.
p.s. If they offer stats during summer at your school I'd take it since that class is so easy it's a joke. Well if you are majoring in CS it will be but I guess most of the rest of the nonmath majors still have a hard time since they really don't have any math background at all and everyone will want to be your friend and you can make some money tutoring if you get a good grade.

Quote:Original post by bluefox25
$$$$ would be nice!!
Would you recommend taking Discrete Mathematics Calculus? I actually already have a B.A. in Criminology from UCI but it has done me no good, I applied to law school and did not get in :(
So I am going for CS degree. I took Stats, it WAS EASY!! but that was years ago(2000) I think.

Could I teach myself Calculus? or does that require Algebra? Like I said it has been a good while.

Advise greatly appreciated!!

Personally I found Calculus to be easier for me than Discrete Math.
The reason is that Calculus I and II anyways requires little to no "critical thinking" so you can pretty much breeze through them courses as long as you have the mechanics down. And by mechanics I mean know how to do fractions,long division,exponents,trig,graphing without breaking a sweat.
Since you haven't done math for a while you'd probably have to take a class like Pre-Calculus that is a refresher of all the stuff I mentioned above otherwise unless you are a math whiz you'll fail like 90% of my classmates.
Discrete math is more like "word problems" in regular math remember them?
"Suppose one painter can paint the entire house in twelve hours, and the second painter takes eight hours. How long would it take the two painters together to paint the house? something like that anyways and I was never good at them.
So it's more related to statistics than Calculus and you really don't need to know any advanced math. You'll get problems like:
"Problem 4. Secret documents are disappearing from CIA headquarters. Some documents are simply misplaced. But the Security Chief suspects that others are begin stolen by Agent X and passed to the government of Liechtenstein to further its relentless pursuit of global domination. Two inspectors are assigned to investigate the matter:
•
Inspector AM determines that the event that a document disappears during a given day is independent of the event that Agent X is in headquarters that day.
•
Similarly, inspector PM determines that the event that a document disappears during
a given night is independent of the event that Agent X is around that night.
The Security Chief concludes that the event that a document disappears is independent of the event that Agent X is present. Therefore, Agent X is probably innocent.
(a) Construct a probability model of the situation. State the inspectors’ determinations
and the Security Chief’s conclusion as probabilities.
(b) Is the Security Chief’s reasoning correct? Justify your answer.
"
If you want to get a even better of idea of what's covered check out the MIT course on discrete math.You can also check out the calculus courses there to give you an idea of what you are facing.

p.s. Can you teach yourself Calculus? Yeah sure but like I said unless you a math whiz you'll still need practice just like you can read a programming book but that doesn't mean you can program. Then again there are those few individuals that can program from day one and if you can do that sure go ahead and take the credit by exam. I did that for astronomy at my college but I've been an amateur astronomer for years before that so it was a piece of cake for me.

[Edited by - daviangel on May 10, 2007 6:24:23 AM]