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Propbabilities, combinatorics, logics and sets are the most valuable things from high school maths that benefitted me all the way through from teenager to profe
by jll29 2y ago
Propbabilities, combinatorics, logics and sets are the most valuable things from high school maths that benefitted me all the way through from teenager to professor.
Calculus is intellectually stimulating, but for my line of work (dealing with uncertaintly, risk, decision making, AI), other parts of mathematics are more useful. However, I would not argue calculus should be replaced. I would argue for more "proper" maths to replace "recipe-like" maths. It's more important to go deeper on a topic than what the topic is.
- CrazyStat 2y agoCombinatorics would make a great high school math course, honestly. Lots of fun puzzles and very approachable.
- blt 2y ago> It's more important to go deeper on a topic than what the topic is. 100% agree. Both calculus and probability can be used successfully as a vehicle to teach rigorous though, which is the real point of math education.
- Jensson 2y ago> (dealing with uncertaintly, risk, decision making, AI) Rate of change, slopes, finding maximal points etc is extremely important in all of that, and that concept you learned and got intuition for in calculus. Calculus isn't worthless for you at all, you just undervalue it. You might not have needed to study more calculus than the original courses, but that just makes that course even more valuable, it is so useful in so many domains even though it is a low level math class.