Quote:
Originally Posted by madbadgalaxyman
Q1. What kind of astronomy (and other sciences) books have you read?
Broadly speaking, what was their intended readership level, and on what topics?
Q2. How comfortable are you with algebra, with cartesian geometry, and with the graphical display of bivariate and trivariate relations ?.... Do you have any statistics, and/or Calculus & Analysis? Are you comfortable with the logarithmic display of data?(nearly all astronomical data is displayed in this way)
Q3. Are you familiar with any of the other sciences, in considerable detail? (this could be an indicator of the sort of background that you might bring to reading an astronomy textbook.)
Q4. How much physics did you do at school, and did you learn, or use, much mathematics and/or physics after you left school?
I assume that you were good at maths and physics at school.(given that you want to become an astronomer, this would have to be the case, I guess.)
Thanks,
Robert
|
Books read, pretty much nothing. Does A brief history of time help.
I mostly just watch any/all docos and have done a few online Astrononomy courses. The most recent of these was
Astronomy - State of the Art
Happy with all the maths mentioned but I am not a big fan of statistics - at least not off the top of my head, but I can easily look for what I need and work something out if I had too - I dont have much trouble reading/interpreting statistics.
My knowledge of biology, chemistry, and geology is pretty much non-existant. No troubles with basics of any but my knowledge of all three is very limited. I can follow along with concepts normally, but I wouldn't be able to say work out what happens in a chemical reaction. But if I see it written out for me I can see how it was worked out.
I have done zero physics since leaving school. Pretty close to no maths also. However I occassionally do polish up my math skills and school level math comes back to me very quickly. I follow a couple of math youtube channels. I figured If I start uni next year I have 5 months to skill up on each. I honestly dont know how I'll handle the math, but I wont know unless I give it a shot. My ex-gf just completed a math degree and I always had a better understanding of math than she did, so I figure I should be okay if I apply myself.