I’ve always felt that the best capstone high school class is neither stats nor calc, but finite math, which ends up being a mix of some linear algebra, combinat

I’ve always felt that the best capstone high school class is neither stats nor calc, but finite math, which ends up being a mix of some linear algebra, combinatorics and probability with a dash of discrete mathematics. This is stuff that has a lot more applicability in business and social science and is under-taught (one example was one that came up when I was getting my MS/teaching credential was my fiancée’s step-father wanted to be able to estimate the length of a roll of sandpaper given the diameter and thickness of the sandpaper. The engineers at the company came up with a correct answer by writing a program to add up the lengths of each layer of sandpaper, I verified their answer with a bit of pencil-and-paper algebra impressing my future in-laws. Someone who had taken a finite math class would¹ be able to do the same. ⸻ 1. Although perhaps I’m being optimistic since I’ve neither taken nor taught finite mathematics, I’ve only paged through a textbook I saw in a bookstore once.