[Swizec]

You're a better mathematician than I am. My experience passing mathematics exams involves a lot of "Ugh I know how this works in principle! Why doesn't it work when I apply it!? #@$%$#%!" I remember one time I was studying Newton's Method and got 5 different results for the same problem. It looked like I was applying the algorithm correctly in all of them, but the algo is very sensitive to small errors in arithmetic.

Hell, even for knowledge based tests, especially oral, I had this problem.

"How does CPU pipeline work?", prof "blahblahblah", swiz "Lol you have no idea what you're talking about" "Argh but that's what your book says!" "Nu-uh. Look, here" "Ugghhh I changed one little word!" "Yeah but that changes the meaning and now your explanation is wrong" "#@$@#%%!@#"

You know, little details I'd never realize on my own are wrong because I was 80% correct and that sounds correct enough, you can look up details when you need them. But prof is looking for 99.999% correct.

I did not graduate, as you can imagine. But I did get straight A's in coding-based classes. :)

[Mehdi2277]

Math is one place where I think it tends to be nice to be pedantic as you are starting to learn a topic. Generally, when I'm unsure of something proof wise it tells me I should re-read all the relevant definitions from that section/chapter. I also generally make it a goal that most important theorems are things I should be able to prove from scratch. Partly because if I can follow the proof well, then I'm less likely to misapply it. Lastly, I like how math has a heavy focus on building upon prior math so I try to review topics from previously taken classes often. I feel that cs classes are much less connected.