To an Oliner Considering E:Math

My major is not technically Engineering with a Concentration in Math, as often as people may think it is. I'm a mechanical engineer. However, I'm one of only two upperclass Oliners who are E:Math-ish (the other is an electrical & computer engineer), so at the moment I'm one of the best people to give advice about designing a math major. One of the sophomores asked me about being E:Math recently, and this is approximately what I told him.

Filling out the paperwork for a self-designed major involves making a list of the coures that will be part of your major and arguing that your plan has breadth, depth, coherence, and rigor. The example of a self-designed major on the registrar's webpage is actually an applied math major. It’s a bad example for classes for various reasons, but its argument for breadth, depth, coherence, and rigor is a good model.

There’s a certain amount of engineering credit that has to be part of your major. Your total engineering credits have to sum to 46, and 30 are required of everyone by default, so four engineering classes in your self-designed major is a good idea. The most math-y engineering classes regularly taught at Olin are Signals and Systems (spring) and Transport Phenomena (fall). Beyond that you can make arguments for a lot of things. Software Design is a good thing to include because so much applied math is numerical.

The non-required math classes Olin regularly offers are Partial Differential Equations, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, Numerical Methods, and Discrete Math. Discrete Math is a topic I would highly recommend, though you can also take combinatorics and graph theory at Wellesley. (More on that later.) Olin also offers various flavors of probability and statistics to fulfill a ProbStat requirement, but most of these aren't that mathematically interesting.

I would recommend NINJAing math classes. NINJAing Linearity really solidified linear algebra for me, and that's helped me a lot.

Wellesley math is pretty good, and they regularly teach the classes that are expected of someone with an undergrad degree in math, Real Analysis and Abstract Algebra. How important that is will depend on what you hope to do after Olin. They have a really good combinatorics/graph theory professor, and I’ve heard good things about the Functional Analysis class there. The other offerings vary; I know they pretty regularly teach Topology and Complex Analysis. If you can get to Brandeis, they have a few grad level classes, which Wellesley doesn't, but not many. The important thing to note about Wellesley math is that all the advanced math classes meet on Wednesdays, which makes taking these courses difficult (technically possible, but difficult) as a senior if you're in SCOPE.

I took most of my math classes abroad. I did a semester at Budapest Semesters in Math, which is for American and Canadian students. They have a huge variety of classes, but Hungarians are especially known for combinatorics and graph theory. I took Galois Theory (an algebra class), Complex Analysis, Topology, Extremal Combinatorics, and Spectral Theory (graph theory with a ton of linear algebra). I loved being in Hungary and getting to do so much math. The nice thing about BSM is that Olin has sent people before, so it’s a pre-approved program. Also, if math ed is something you’re interested in, they have some really good math ed classes, and there’s also a version of BSM that’s focused on education, BSME. BSME probably isn't officially pre-approved, but as an extension of BSM it would be pretty easy to get it approved.

The other study abroad program that’s just for math is Math in Moscow, which is much smaller, so there’s less class variety, but the level might be a bit higher overall. It’s not pre-approved by Olin, though, so it would take more planning to go.

The last study abroad option is to just go to a university connected to Olin that has a decent math department. Most large technical schools will.

The other thing that’s been really good for me is doing math research. I’m in a research group at Babson that does graph theory. You can always ask any of the math professors if they have problems you could work on, though. Depending on your interests some of the engineering professors (particularly Siddhartan, Chris Lee, and Brian Storey) could be worth asking as well. I’ve done research elsewhere as well through REUs, as has the other current almost-E:Math Oliner.