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i think a course like that could be really good, but I don’t think you could avoid telling people about the concept of derivatives or integrals. If you tried I

i think a course like that could be really good, but I don’t think you could avoid telling people about the concept of derivatives or integrals. If you tried I think it would just make things seem more confusing and arbitrary. and you might as well introduce the notation and definitions at that point, it’s pretty simple. you wouldn’t need most of the material in a current calculus class (who cares about the volume of a weird surface) but i still believe you would need calculus.

clairity 6y ago
i'd analogize with basic physics. you can get pretty far using newtonian formulas and the like without ever delving into the calculus underpinnings. same in economics. calc gives you a deeper understanding, but only adds utility at the margins (which is helpful in academics or r&d, but not so much in high school). you can have the computer do curve-fitting and finding optima for you and still learn a lot about how to tease out useful information from an otherwise amorphous mound of data.