Differential Equations is One of the Worst Taught Math Courses

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Differential equations.

It’s one of the worst taught math courses.

Thing is, there’s a lot of breadth to it.

It has a lot of branch off points.

And what I’ve experienced in my own education and many students that I’ve tutored was that typically, the instructor will go through like integrating factors and linear differential equations, then do characteristic polynomial, second order.

I mean, that’s barely anything.

But then they say, “All right, we’ve covered the basics.” Now let’s just go into my favorite area of research.

So it’s like, depending on who your instructor is, you can get a completely different view on what even is the subject?!

What does it cover?!

This teaser is distilled from the following posts, if you want to dive deeper:

• The funny thing about Differential Equations is that pretty much everyone who teaches it has a different conception of what it covers.
• When I took DiffEq in undergrad, it was taught as part of an Abstract Algebra class

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