Introduction Math class History class
Links
alum.mit.edu/www/alljordan/about/university/college/, this web page.
alum.mit.edu/www/alljordan/, my personal website.
college education transcripts
On September 21, the CoC denied my petition, sending me this report.
I've added a photo of the CoC petition to the site. I've e-mailed to MIT
today the question as to whether I can appeal or dispute further here,
with this message.
This site is now hosted at "mysite _______ net/alljordan/college/" and no longer hosted
at "home _________ net/~mit-comp".
November 24, 2004
My transfer credit appeal was denied by the Associate Dean
of SHASS on August 25. I asked
the Director of the HASS Education Office as to my next level of appeal, and she directed
me to wait for the CoC to decide on my petition, on September 21. That's too late for the
September degree list, so I'm aiming to graduate on the February '05 list now.
I've retrieved from my archives letters exchanged last fall
with the HASS Office Director
and with the Fall History TCE (I had thought them lost and unarchived after a Jan '04 disk
failure). Seeing it again now, I would have paraphrased the Fall History TCE's letter a
bit differently than I did in my HASS-D transfer credit appeals, but essentially the same.
September 20, 2004
The Head of the History Faculty has denied my
transfer credit appeal, so I'll now be appealing
to the Associate Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, who the
Director of the HASS Education Office instructed me is next in line in the appeals process.
August 13, 2004
On Friday, I got e-mail from the Director of the HASS Education Office that
when my petition to the CoC for a HASS requirement substitution passed through her
office they wrote a recommendation to not approve on the petition. She said that rather
than petitioning for a substitution the right course for me would be to appeal the
decision of the TCE. When I countered that the primary reason the TCE had given me for
not transferring my history class as the type of credit I need was that a class must
precisely match the subject matter of an MIT class to be transferred as that type of
credit and so I had interpreted this as a perfect case for asking the CoC for a HASS
substitution, she responded that a precise subject matter match was not a requirement
for transferring a class for HASS-D credit and that the TCE can write HASS-D credit on
the transfer form without writing a class number.
Last fall, when I was choosing what humanities class to take, I got in touch with the HASS
office and the fall History TCE. The HASS office gave me the General and Mechanical Criteria
for HASS-D Subjects and told me that I could not add writing component assignments on my own--
that they would have to be required. The fall History TCE told me that a two-hour instead
of a three-hour final would not be a problem per meeting that element of the HASS-D criteria,
and that, in addition to the HASS-D criteria, a significant portion of the class reading should
be from primary sources. In January, the professor of History 1020 offered me his class under
a revised syllabus, ammended to require additional writing
assignments, so as to meet
the HASS-D criteria. I sent the syllabus to the History TCE, and she told me that there was
a different History TCE for the spring and directed me to him. The spring History TCE raised
an additional standard: that the class would have to precisely match the subject matter of an
MIT HASS-D history class to be transferred as that type of credit. I'll now be appealing the
spring History TCE's decision to not transfer my class as HASS-D, to the Head of the History
Faculty, as the Director of the HASS Education Office has instructed me, and I'll ask that
my class not be held to standards beyond those mentioned by the HASS office and the fall
History TCE when I was arranging to take the class. I should also like to maintain hope for
my HASS substitution petition to the CoC, in case there's difficulty getting a positive
result from the transfer credit appeal, and a timely result with respect to the September
degree list.
August 9, 2004;
second paragraph added August 10, 2004
The math class I took has been transferred to MIT as 18.05. I haven't followed up yet as to
what kind of time expectation there is on a decision from the Committee on Curricula on applying
the credit for the history class I took towards my remaining humanities slot. (Some
details on the content of the history class, below.) I'm eager for a positive decision so I may
seek employment secure that my S.B. degree is set to be awarded in September.
July 23, 2004
Below is the late May '04 content of this webpage: an introductory section followed by
sections for the two classes I'm transferring, links to which were given with my transfer
credit requests, (those two sections were written to the transfer credit examiners). The
history class was subsequently transferred to MIT as 12 generic units, so I have submitted
a form asking the Committee on Curricula to substitute that credit for my remaining degree
requirement for a "HASS-D" humanities class of category 3, 4, or 5. As for the math class,
I don't presently know if the math TCE has transferred it yet, as what class number it may
have been transferred, or what class numbers other than 18.05, or whether generic units, would
still contribute to an acceptable 8B concentration; maybe I'll have to jaunt to the 'tute for
an 18.05 standing examination.
July 16, 2004
I set out this semester to finish my 8b degree via two classes taken at the University
of Utah. I originally didn't graduate in the spring of '98, before the existence of 8b,
after 8 semesters at MIT beginning in the fall of '93 and interrupted by a year off in the
spring and fall of '96, with my attempted 8 degree complete except for an undergraduate
thesis and a HASS-D of categories 4 or 5. Presently, I can meet my 8b degree requirements
with a math class that, together with 18.04 and 18.06, will satisfy an 8b concentration in
math and a HASS-D of categories 3, 4, or 5.
The U of U is semester-based. There were fifteen weeks of classes from January 12 to April 28.
Finals week was May 3 to 6.
Here is a photo of my Request for Additional Credit form for this class.
Here is my U of U transcript for this semester's work.
I got an A in Math 3070, Applied Statistics I, the local best-fit of 18.05. Class met each
week for 3 one-hour lectures and 1 two-hour statistical software lab session.
Main Syllabus. (3 pages, concatenated horizontally)
Lab syllabus. (2 pages, concatenated horizontally)
The text was Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences, 6th Edition,
by Jay L. Devore, and we covered chapters 1 to 9.
Table of Contents photos: 1, 2, 3. Those three photos, on one page (485KB).
The lab text was Learning SAS in the Computer Lab, 2nd Edition, by Rebecca J. Elliot, and
we covered chapters (modules) 1 to 10.
Table of Contents photos: 1, 2, 3. Those three photos, on one page (285KB).
I've read through this semester's 18.05 lecture notes this past week, and I see that 18.05
involves substantially more difficult mathematical manipulations than Math 3070, covering
the same core introduction to prob. and stat, with several additional topics. Some
18.05 topics that didn't appear in Math 3070 are: using the Jacobian to combine pdf's,
order statistics, moment-generating functions, and testing goodness-of-fit with chi-squared.
On the other hand Math 3070 spent more time on different cases of confidence intervals and
hypothesis testing. An example of a difference between the classes is that in Math 3070
the Inclusion-Exclusion principle is only presented for the cases of unions of two and three
sets, and not in the general form. Although 18.05 has a greater logic density than Math 3070,
I consider the two classes to be substantially equivalent introductions to prob. and stat.
I can post my homework and midterms upon request. (Homework photos and lab programs page.)
Here is a photo of my Request for Additional Credit form for this class.
Here is my U of U transcript for this semester's work.
I got an A- in History 1020, Western Civilization Since 1300. Class met each week for
2 one-hour lectures and 1 one-hour discussion section. Last fall, the HASS office supplied
me with the General and Mechanical Criteria for HASS-D Subjects, and in all the
departments here corresponding to HASS-D categories 3 through 5, not a precise match was
to be found. History 1020 met all the Criteria except for the Writing Component, so I
asked the professor for a specially revised syllabus to satisfy the Writing Component.
He agreed, requiring of me three seven-page written assignments, each providing an overview
of one of the scheduled themes from the syllabus.
The text was The Western Heritage, 8th Edition, (Since 1300 Volume), by Donald Kagan,
Steven Ozment, and Frank M. Turner. We covered chapters 9 to 31.
Table of Contents photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14,
15, 16, 17, 18.
Table of Contents photos (on one html page, 2.2MB).
The text is magnificent, replete with graphical and textual primary sources.
Table of Contents photos 13 to 16 (on one html page, 619KB)
cover textual primary sources
of more than a few lines that were embedded in the chapters, 121 of them in chapters 9-31.
The embedded textual primary sources listed above are typically three-quarters of a page
in size, (two examples here). Additional required reading packets handed out are listed here.
We were not required to read from the text's companion CD-ROM; I found it convenient
to read the sections corresponding to the chapter-blocks I chose for my Writing Component essays.
I've posted my Writing Component assignments here.
A few days prior to each of the midterm and final, we were given three possible topics
for the essay question, and then at testing time one of those questions would be selected
randomly for the class. As a surprise for the final, two random selections were made from
which we could choose. The tests were not open-book or open-notes. Each test also had ten
terms, not previously disclosed as the essay questions were, from which to choose five and
write a paragraph for each of those five. Here are the midterm questions and my bluebook and the
final exam questions.
The professor was a talented lecturer, and the class was entirely on par with the two HASS-D's I
have previously passed, the three I've dropped, and the one I felt I could not drop [for personal/
family reasons: the possibility of salvaging the class after drop date, in my 8th semester] and failed.
As for having to transfer this class to MIT under a current MIT HASS-D class number,
the closest fits I see would be 21H.311, 21H.433, or 21H.912, none of them being great
fits. 21H.311 covers about the first 40% of Hist 1020, obviously in more detail for it's
tighter time range. 21H.433 covers about an early-middle 38% of Hist 1020. The time range
of 21H.912 is the latter 72% of Hist 1020's, but 21H.912 has more global and otherwise
somewhat different foci. If the TCE deems an S in a current MIT HASS-D class number
for me here to be an inappropriate use of that class number, are there any other options
for transfering the class so it will meet the GIR I took it to fill? Can a new 21H.xxx
number be assigned? Is there a dummy number that could be used? Can 12 units of unnumbered
credit bear attached logic that it satisfies a particular GIR? I suppose there's a good chance
I may have to petition to get the GIR credit sought here accepted/waived. I certainly should
prefer not to face petitioning, and I think an S in a closest overlapping MIT class number would
be substantially reasonable.
The math class was accepted as 18.05, but the history class was transferred but as 12 general
units and not as type HASS-D. I'm awaiting today the Committee on Curricula decision on my
petition to substitute this HASS-D caliber history class for my last HASS-D slot.
I find SHASS's apparent policy of making it difficult to impossible to fill a HASS-D slot
with credit from another university unconscionable.
Allen Jordan
May 25, 2004;
revised May 27, 2004;
bracketed comment added to #hist section August 9, 2004;
added to #hist section count of documents embedded in the text August 10, 2004
added #conc section September 21, 2004