Dissatisfied with the current math course offerings at IMSA? Looking for something new to explore? The math department knows your pain, and they’re planning a new, exciting math course for next semester. This week, The Acronym interviewed anonymous teachers in the math office about the “MI-5” course currently in the works. Here’s the interview.
The Acronym: What are the prerequisites for this course? What can students do to prepare for it?
Teacher #1: That’s a good question. The prerequisites are the completion of MI-4, the BC calculus series, proofs, MVC, real and complex analysis, number theory, and/or Linear algebra. Experience in differential equations and abstract algebra is also appreciated. Any sophomore who qualifies for the course will get to skip high school and college altogether, and earn their PhD in mathematics immediately.
The Acronym: Wow, that’s a lot of knowledge required for one math class! What material will students cover in the course?
Teacher #2: Oh, all sorts of interesting things! Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness, rational solutions to equations for elliptic curves, the P vs. NP problem, and nontrivial zeros of the Riemann-Zeta function. Not to mention countless other unsolved problems.
The Acronym: That’s quite a bit of ground to cover! How can the students keep up with all of that?
Teacher #2: The course will be 8 mods long, every day of the week, for as many semesters as possible. There’s no letter grade involved; students pass if they can prove one of the aforementioned conjectures, and fail if they can’t.
The Acronym: Our knowledge of math problems is certainly limited, but it seems like the only thing the class is focusing on are the Clay institute’s millennium prize problems. How much was the reward for solving one of them again?
Teacher #1: One million dollars. Think of how many maintenance costs could be taken care of with that kind of dough. We could get up to six million, and could’ve gotten more if Perelman had kept his damn mouth shut…
The Acronym: Uh, returning to the course itself, what credits will it count for?
Teacher #1: Taking the course and passing it will enshrine a student’s name in the eternal hall of the greats of mathematics. Euler, Ramanujan, Tao, Von Neumann, Fourier, whoever did that…that prime number thing or something… you’ll be one of them. You’ll no doubt put this school on the map, and once donors see that we’ve produced Millennium Prize winners, the floodgates of funding will finally open. Out-of-state students will pay as much as they can to attend an institution with that kind of prestige. The future’s looking bright.
The Acronym: Very exciting possibilities. Well, you heard it here, folks… MI-5 is a rigorous course for intrepid students looking for a real challenge. Will you be the one to go where no student has gone before and solve a seemingly unsolvable problem? Will you be the one to bring IMSA all the honor…
Teacher #2: …and funding.
The Acronym: …and funding it could ask for? Find out for yourself, and enroll in MI-5 today!
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