[restofus]

If you want to know how the guy came up with it , do you think someone taught him that or he delved into the topic deeper by himself and figured it out .The professor makes it clear that you can do the derivates if you know so I do not understand how the course would be better if that was given as a assignment. Also if the professor thought the same way why would he want to teach a class instead of working for a bigco or a research firm ?

[sausagefeet]

Of course the guy who came up with it taught himself, there was nobody to teach him. The point of a college is to speed a lot of this up, though, and tell you the results these people got and how and the implications. I think you're drawing a bigger contrast between what we said than I intended. I'm not saying that Applied courses are wrong or should not exist. I have taken several in my day because I just don't have the mental discipline to learn a lot of theory all the time. What I am saying is that I don't think really smart people complaining about not getting enough out of the course is not a matter of them thinking they are elite but that they just want more and don't see the point in wasting time on something that won't give it to them. My favorite classes in college were always the ones that required a lot of theory and a lot of rigor because it brought so much more together for me (even though I often didn't really understand it), I think a the elite you speak of probably have similar feelings.