Get your booty on the floor tonight…

Hi there,

I have a question regarding major/minor requirement/admissions.
I am a SOC major and a PHL minor student – hence needing another minor.

I really want to take Statistics as my 2nd minor, which I’ve read has no minimum GPA requirement. I recently e-mailed the stats dept to double-check and received the following reply from a very helpful individual: “I am not aware of any restrictions on enrolment in the stat minor.” Not satisfied with such reply I did some more research and found out that I need some grade 12 high-school math for Stats(or something along those lines).
The things is – I am a 3rd yr student, simply neeing another minor and really want to do STATs the only problem is that I never took math in gr. 12 high-school. I’m good at math I simply have not taken it in my last yr of high-school because I wanted to do Humanities in University. HELP! Can I even do a STATs minor now without some high-school gr 12 math? Or, does that matter?

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Hi.

That “very helpful individual” (not sure if you were implying sarcasm there) at the Statistics Department did NOT lie. Nor did they give you the whole truth given your high school circumstances. You do not need a Grade 12 math course to enroll in the Stats Minor. However, taking either MAT135 or MAT137 is required to complete that Minor (Calendar, page 493). On page 342 you will find that you need Gr.12 MCV4U (Calculus & Vectors) or MHF4U (Advanced Functions) as pre-requisites to enrol in either of those 100-level math courses.

Whew! That was fun! It was kind of like a “choose your own adventure novel,” except that you don’t have to sell your soul to the bank to buy a paperback.

So, the question becomes: how can I enroll in MAT135/7 without the Gr.12 math pre-requisite?

There are a few options.

• a) Enrol in a high-school summer course. I’m not sure where you are living during the summer, but this link from the Toronto DSB Continuing Education (esp. page 7) may be useful.

http://www.tdsb.on.ca/wwwdocuments/programs/continuing_education/docs/SummerCredit.pdf

• b) Enrol in the Preparing for University Math Program (P.U.M.P.) offered by the Department of Mathematics here at U of T: http://www.math.utoronto.ca/pump

This is a preparatory course that students may take in order to ease the transition from high-school math to uni math, or as in your case, to catch students up on pre-requisite high-school coursework. They say that homework and assignments are minimal, and examination is based on tests and quizzes. It costs 600 bucks, and you can register right up until the course begins on 06 July 2009. It ends on 21 August.

Now, your bizarre and masochistic desire to slap a Stats minor onto your plate suggests to me that you would see no problem with something like P.U.M.P. However, as a humanities student with an energetically critical view of the world, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about P.U.M.P., the acronym.

PUMP?!? Really Mathematics Department? PUMP?!

I think I can swallow the intended connotation of “pumping up students’ math abilities for first year.” However, to reveal the dirty thoughts that flew through my mind when I first came across the website… let’s just say I would be straddling the already fuzzy threshold of professionalism.

No, I won’t go there. Instead, I will leave you with my vote for PUMP’s new theme song.

P.s. I hope it’s still stuck in your head when you wake up tomorrow morning.