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Undergraduate Program:
Reflections on Changing from Quarters to Semesters
We are now in the midst of the third academic year under
the semester system, the switch from quarters to semesters having occurred
in September 1999. The semester system has certain benefits. For instance,
it has enabled us to change some 4-credit quarter courses into more leisurely
paced 3-credit semester courses. A second example concerns many of our
year-long sequences. Under the quarter system, we generally felt that
a student who took only the first of the three quarters was not getting
a sufficiently rich experience, while those who would take two of the
three quarters in the sequence would have difficulty finding a good alternative
course if they did not want to continue with the third quarter of the
sequence. On the other hand, the first of two semesters is typically a
satisfying educational experience even if the second semester is not taken.
There is also another kind of benefit that resulted from the switch from
quarters to semesters. It gave us an opportunity to re-think and improve
our curriculum and the structure of our courses in ways that are only
incidentally connected to semester conversion.
When the University of Minnesota converted from quarters
to semesters for the academic year 1999-2000, the School of Mathematics
and the School of Statistics decided to make their beginning 5xxx-level
courses in probability and statistics identical. These courses, which
had been somewhat similar under the quarter system, are often taken by
undergraduate majors in the two disciplines and also by graduate students
in a variety of areas. The reason we decided to make the courses identical
was to simplify the structure of our programs for students and give them
more flexibility in their planning. After these changes were made, the
number of students taking the courses has grown; it is approximately 225-250
for the current academic year, approximately double what it was in the
last year on the quarter system.
The merged courses, which now use the same textbook and
course outline, are Math 5651, called "Basic Theory of Probability
and Statistics," and Stat 5101, called "Theory of Statistics
I." There are eight sections being given during the current academic
year. Four of the eight are taught as Math 5651 by mathematics faculty
and the other four are taught as Stat 5101 by statistics faculty. The
flexibility gained by merging the courses lies in the fact that now the
course under either designator is an appropriate prerequisite for each
of the following three courses: Math 5652, "Introduction to Stochastic
Processes"; Math 5654, "Prediction and Filtering"; and
Stat 5102,"Theory of Statistics II." Thus, for instance, a student
can take Stat 5101 in order to prepare for Math 5654; similarly he or
she can take Math 5651 to prepare for Stat 5102. And a student who knows
that he or she wants to eventually take Math 5652 or Stat 5102 but who
is yet undecided between them can proceed by taking either Math 5651 or
Stat 5101 as a first course for both potential directions.
Bert Fristedt,
Professor of Mathematics
www@math.umn.edu
URL http://www.math.umn.edu/index.shtml
The University of Minnesota
is an equal opportunity educator and employer.
2000, The Regents of the University of Minnesota
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