Hello plummers, engineers and others who just so happen to be reading The Iron Warrior. I am here to educate you lovely people in the Engineering Faculty about the world not so far beyond our classrooms, the world occupied by mathematicians, future doctors and current drama queens. That’s right, the interesting and infinitely confusing world of the other faculties! Now we may know them vaguely as those people we pass on campus or share classes with during our electives, but what are they really all about, and more importantly how do they see us? There are a total of six faculties at Waterloo: Engineering, Science, Applied Health Science, Math, Arts, and Environment. Over the course of the next five articles of The Iron Warrior, we will explore the other five faculties.
Arguably engineering’s closest faculty is that of mathematics. The home base of our calculus profs, the mathematics faculty includes such programs as computer science and half of software engineering, in addition to pure mathematics. They enjoy a similar ratio of males to females as engineering and they are similarly ambivalent of this fact because ‘technology is cooler anyways.’
Bio/ native habitat/ lifestyle: The Faculty of Mathematics is filled with students called mathies who often get just as little sleep as engineers. Mathies enjoy the liberty of creating their own schedules and taking diverse electives. Though not particularly hands on, mathies throw wicked parties in the ‘comfy lounge’, the focal point of the mathematics native environment on the third floor of MC. These parties occur for 12 to 24 hours at a time and include programming, techno music and what is probably considered an unhealthy consumption of energy drinks. Mathies are most likely to be found in some part of the labyrinth that is MC. Hard core math students leave the building only occasionally for the less important things in life: food and showers.
How we interact: Math and engineering have a love-hate relationship to put it lightly, yet math is probably one of the faculties with the closest tie to engineering. On the hate side, mathies are always checking their backs to make sure we aren’t sneaking up to steal their Pink Tie or pull some other crazy prank. (Where is the original natural log? Not with math, that’s for sure!) Not that they’re innocent, but their ‘purer than thou’ attitude (see http://xkcd.com/435/) infuriates us engineers. After all, at least our math has a purpose! However mathies and engineers are joined together in the common joy of taking more than twice as much math as all the other faculties. We even share software engineers who are intermittently tossed between and embraced by both faculties. However a common craziness can be observed between both groups: we colour ourselves randomly to show our love for our programs. Both faculties also have awesome publications, so if you are looking for some good comic relief, check out MathNews.
Common areas of interest: Math, computers, and programming, are all things we seem to have in common. Social gatherings frequently occur with attendees conversing and surfing the net.
Verdict: Math is a pretty cool faculty. They are always visible if you know where to look, the math lounge being the place to start. Note however that many math students live in a nocturnal world, take t-3 to convert between normal time and math time.
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