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It's false that any of what I said can be true for some (or many) students? How do you determine if you're one of those students?


You're right, the above posters generalize way too much. They are either CS or Maths students and as such are already well-prepared for self-study! If you study Maths you already know what all the symbols like epsilon, e etc. mean, you can just gloss over a mathematical text and get the gist of it. Same goes for many (but not all!!!) CS-students, some unis lean a lot on algebra, some don't do much maths after the first two courses.

As such, I think it's ridiculous to go up to anyone and tell him/her to just "study by yourself", I could give a maths book to a biologist and that person would understand absolutely nothing without guidance.


Well, you could certainly do it when you start with "Maths 101" or something like that.


I was addressing the money issue and tacitly assuming that they could do the work. For just a Bachelor's and then just a Master's in engineering, they have a good chance of being able to judge correctly if they can do the work.




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