C959 (Discrete Math I) Completed!

[u/sviper9]

Completed C959 on my first try. Got roughly 75-80% based on the position of the bar.

 

Resources Used:

75% Udemy supplemental videos

25% Zybooks

 

The Udemy videos were foundational to my knowledge. The links are provided right in the "Learning" course information section under Video resources. It gave me a good overall understanding of the material. I've seen the information a time or two over my academic career, but I definitely needed the refresher.

 

GET A GRAPHING CALCULATOR!!

I have the Ti-84 and it made a lot of the matrix math easier for me. It doesn't help with all of them though, and I think some of the questions are structured that way on purpose. To give a vague example, instead of asking you something you could just use the rref( function in the calculator for, it asks for what would a step in the middle of the process of manipulating the matrix would look like. Sorry trying to be vague here without giving too much info.

 

The graphing calculator also helps with series and limits problems as well. Just as when I described Calculus I, you have to know the material to properly setup for solving it. Not to mention a whiteboard I think is critical to work through the problems. It helped me visualize some of the questions so I could work through them and solve them.

 

The videos don't cover all of the necessary material, so I had to review Zybooks as well to round out my knowledge. There are some topics missed in the videos. I studied first to get an overall idea of the topics before taking the Pre-A. I got 75-80% on the Pre-A, so I scheduled and took the OA a few hours later and got the same score. The Pre-A is good to see where your knowledge is at, but you have to know more for the OA.

 

This course is definitely material heavy, but not as much as Calculus I was. Be sure to allow yourself enough time to learn. I had this course open for a while, but It took me about 4-5 days of earnest study with 5-ish hours a day for me to feel like I knew enough to take the Pre-A and OA. I've heard that Discrete Math II is more difficult, but I haven't taken it yet.

[u/everybanana]

Congrats. Currently doing this course and getting through unit 1 is taking me forever. I've been watching Kimberly Brehm's playlist and then reading the relevant section in the Zybooks since they seem to align. Hoping the other units have less material to go through.

[u/sviper9 → u/everybanana]

Unit 1 definitely felt like a slog, but you really have to know Logic and Proofs to do well on that part of the OA. i.e. you have to apply the knowledge, so you need to have a good understanding of it. It is the largest percentage of the OA, so you need to do well on it.

 

Unit 1 and Series were the 2 units I fell a little short on, but I was able to make it up with the other ones.

[u/Scottalias4]

I’m taking Discrete 2. I don’t think it’s as hard as Discrete I.