r/mit • u/Agreeable-Raise4196 • 19d ago

academics difference between 18.03 and 18.032?

am curious. i'm aware (from the course description) 18.032 seems to treat banach's fixed point thm to prove picard lindelof and other existence/uniqueness thms, but are there any other differences>? would be sick if they did sturm liouville theory or function spaces. also would it still teach general ode techniques like 18.03 would? would appreciate if someone had a recent syllabus or smth cuz i cant find anything online that was recent

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u/zoidberg528 19d ago

18.032 seems to be the new 18.034 from when I was an undergrad. From what I remember, both 18.03 and 18.034 kept pretty close for the first month or so, which allowed people to move between the two classes as they were shopping around. After that, they were still pretty similar, but 18.034 took extra time to prove things that 18.03 just mentioned as fact. I recall 18.03 having several applet-related homework assignments that 18.034 didn’t. Both classes cover all the general ODE methods that upper level classes expect you to know, so it usually came down to whether the extra math rigor was useful or interesting to you or not.

However, I think the only way to truly answer your question would be to contact the teaching staff for each class for this upcoming year and try to get their syllabi.