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> “It’s the same thing with calculus. You’re not here because you’re going to use calculus in your everyday life. You’re here because calculus is weightlifting
by mkl95 4y ago
> “It’s the same thing with calculus. You’re not here because you’re going to use calculus in your everyday life. You’re here because calculus is weightlifting for your brain.”
There are many non calculus things that are weightlifting for your brain, including many math fields that high schoolers don't even know about. Calculus is taught to teenagers for historical reasons, do not overthink it.
- nightski 4y agoI've only maybe used differentiation/integration a few times in my professional career (use it more on personal projects actually). That said, having a solid intuition about first/second order derivatives, rates of change, is incredibly valuable when thinking about the world. I probably use this intuition quite a bit in day to day life without even realizing it. I do wish more probability & statistics was taught earlier on though.
- mkl95 4y agoI agree on the intuition. But once the intuition and the fundamentals are there, should teenagers spend months crunching calculus heuristics? It's still the way it's taught in Europe and it's incredibly inefficient.
- sarchertech 4y ago“Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.” —John von Neumann I’m sure there’s room for improvement, but intuition and understanding are usually the result of repetition.
- mkl95 4y agoIronically, if von Neumann was alive today he would probably encourage kids to use some number crunching software rather than "getting used to it". In that sense civilization may actually have regressed since the von Neumann / Feynman days. Ditching pen and paper for sophisticated computing tools gave us nuclear power and moon landings within 20 years.
- sarchertech 4y agoWould he? And no one is arguing that working engineers should be taking derivatives by hand.
- mr_toad 4y agoWho’s going to write the software if no one knows calculus?
- ajuc 4y agoCalculus (and the rest of math) is taught because development of human civilization depends on some people knowing it and developing it further. And if you don't start early it's hard to catch up not to mention developing it further. And it's also training your brain (but that can be done by other things like puzzles or games).
- mkl95 4y agoI'd say this used to be true, but calculus has become a historical artifact even at some engineering fields. We have become very good at building abstractions. Matrix / linear algebra on the other hand is something we unconsciously do all the time for high level tasks such as rearranging UIs.
- wvenable 4y agoA great many things that humans depend on every day require some understanding of calculus. If we stop teaching teenagers the vast amount of knowledge that humans have accumulated over centuries then progress will stop.