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"data science" is not a field of math. lord knows the term does not need to be watered down further. is "statistics" not adequate (in a high school context)? (I

by bllguo 5y ago

"data science" is not a field of math. lord knows the term does not need to be watered down further. is "statistics" not adequate (in a high school context)? (I'm not singling you out - they have a "Data Science" section in the proposed California mathematics education framework) while I do agree that statistics education should be much more heavily emphasized, I still believe it and calculus should both be taught. Understanding the basic ideas of calculus opens a lot of doors in other fields of study. Hell, "data science" math would necessarily involve understanding calculus and optimization

zippy5 5y ago
I think you can decompose a calculus course into three key components; principle/concepts, proofs, and procedurally solvable math problems. All three have value but clearly the math problem aspect of it has depreciated in value due to calculators, wolfram alpha, etc yet it tends to remain the focus of many math curriculums. Calculus by its nature is more computationally intensive, meaning that it has experienced the greatest decline. If you really think about it, that curriculum was designed for an era when we called human "computers". There is probably opportunity to make calculus a more broadly valuable class by deemphasizing the mechanics and focusing on the principles and proofs.
- Jensson 5y ago
  What calculus class did you take? I don't think that there are many calculus classes where computation is a significant part. Rather you learn how to work with and translate equations, but there is little about methods for manually calculating integrals or derivatives by hand with different approximation methods etc. Basically nobody learns that properly today. And the tiny part of the course is the part where you learn and get intuition for the "Area under curve" concept, which is extremely important for basically everything.

by bllguo 5y ago

zippy5 5y ago

I think you can decompose a calculus course into three key components; principle/concepts, proofs, and procedurally solvable math problems. All three have value but clearly the math problem aspect of it has depreciated in value due to calculators, wolfram alpha, etc yet it tends to remain the focus of many math curriculums. Calculus by its nature is more computationally intensive, meaning that it has experienced the greatest decline. If you really think about it, that curriculum was designed for an era when we called human "computers". There is probably opportunity to make calculus a more broadly valuable class by deemphasizing the mechanics and focusing on the principles and proofs.

Jensson 5y ago
What calculus class did you take? I don't think that there are many calculus classes where computation is a significant part. Rather you learn how to work with and translate equations, but there is little about methods for manually calculating integrals or derivatives by hand with different approximation methods etc. Basically nobody learns that properly today. And the tiny part of the course is the part where you learn and get intuition for the "Area under curve" concept, which is extremely important for basically everything.