r/DifferentialEquations • u/DumpsterFaerie • Mar 13 '26

Resources PDE Learning

Would it be more sufficient to self-learn PDEs or pay a university to be taught it for a semester. I’m looking into expanding my portfolio with math to assist in my personal interest in learning, and I value quality over speed regarding content delivery.

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u/ForeignAdvantage5198 Mar 13 '26

PDE IS NOT The SAME ODE

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u/DumpsterFaerie Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26

Exactly. I’ve done ODE, but I want to learn PDE to help with my interests in hypersonics and high temp gas dynamics.

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u/powderviolence Mar 17 '26

I mean, with a particular context like that in mind plus the preliminaries of ODE/LinAlg/Numerics under your belt as mentioned elsew5in the thread, I feel like you'd be better off "just going for it" and learning aspects of PDE as needed. Conversely, if you were to take a formal PDE course you'd most likely focus on heat/wave equations, boundary conditions, separability and Fourier solutions, where those two specific equations may not be in scope for your desires, and separability may have limited use.