/calc/ I need your help.

I'm starting school at a large community college this spring. They have a 2-2 program set up with the local universities where you can take your basics and non-degree specific courses and then transfer your credits according to the specific degree plan you choose.

I went in with the intention of majoring in computer science. After the brief meeting with a "advising counselor" My list of suggested freshman courses was given to me (the whole scheduling process is self-service, with my degree plan and advising counselor's recommendations I sign up for my classes online).

I get home and I see "Algebra." My sister tells me this is a requirement, and all entering freshman have to take College Algebra. But friends have told me their first math course at their university was Calculus 1. In high school, AP Calculus was available, and for the most part the only math class offered that I had not taken.

I tried signing up for Pre-Calc/Calculus instead, but was told that prerequisites were not satisfied.I mean, I could probably benefit from brushing up on algebra before going on but am I being cheated here? Forced to take remedial classes, even with a 650 in math on my SAT's?

Hi /calc/,

I'm puzzling over the notion of a size function in my ring theory class. Since my prof doesn't seem to be holding office hours yet I thought I'd bring this here and hope others may benefit as well.

For R an integral domain, a size function N: R --> {non-negative integers} was defined to have the following properties:
(i) N(0) < N(r) for all r non zero
(ii) There exists an m such that N(r) = m iff r is a unit. Moreover N(r) > m for all r not a unit and non-zero.
(iii) For a, b in R non-zero, N(a) < N(ab) and N(a) = N(ab) iff b is a unit.

I'm wandering if my following thoughts are correct or if I'm funamentally mistaken about something here. If I suppose r in R has a non trivial factorization, r = sq, then by (ii) it could be that N(r) = N(sq) = m+1. But s and q are non-unit and non-associates of r, either they're irreducible or have further non-trivial factorizations themselves. Would be it more appropriate to say the "smallest" non trivial factorization can have size 2(m+1) = 2m+2 for this reason? Additionally, what if r isn't a unit, but is irreducible? Does it necessarily have size < m?. Or can the second part of property (iii) be weakened to say something like "N(a) = N(bc) for b and associate of a and c a unit"?

I'm trying to figure out how I might use N to show that r with N(r) = m+1 has a non trivial factorization and ran into these questions. I feel like there isn't enough information here to go off of. Or I'm just too dumb to see the obvious. IDK

Thank you

Let's have a get-to-know each other thread. What kinds of math have you taken/do you know?

I've taken calc/DiffEqs and Linear Algebra, and am currently doing Numerical Analysis and Real Analysis. Compactness is weird as hell.