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That's because 1) calculus is taught in high schools and is generally taught in college regardless of whether you major in CS (so for example someone wanting to

That's because 1) calculus is taught in high schools and is generally taught in college regardless of whether you major in CS (so for example someone wanting to self-teach CS after college will have taken calculus). And, calculus is not particularly useful for most CS grads, except for specific areas (theoretical aspects of probability, machine learning, graphics). Many great CS programs also don't require physics. From my observations, physics requirements in curriculum tend to tacked on solely due to CS being in the engineering school. To be honest, physics beyond a general overview is not really useful for most CS grads, even those doing complex CS-heavy work. Discrete math, logic, proofs, and probability are all immensely useful in CS. However, they tend to be of a completely different flavor of teaching compared to calculus courses.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> That's because calculus is taught in high schools and is generally taught in college regardless of whether you major in CS (so for example someone wanting to self-teach CS after college will have taken calculus). The depth usually required for a CS degree is not usually required in high schools (and often not available there), nor is it usually a requirement for non-STEM degrees, and people wanting to self-teach CS after college will very often be non-STEM majors.
brudgers 13y ago
I'm not saying calculus is something that every computer science graduate uses in their daily professional life. But you're not going to meet a [US] computer science graduate who does not have it or a computer scientist who cannot perform it. And anything that says "here's what a computer science degree is" does a disservice by not mentioning it. My criticism is based on the same assumption that underpins your argument, that the people looking at this list already have a sufficient background in mathematics, or more generally that people looking at the article have general STEM training. Yet, just looking around HN, you'll see that many of those asking "Should I get a CS degree?" are people who just fell into programming, and in the larger world you have people moving into the field as a career change Think about all those bootcamps that market to liberal arts and business majors. These are people with degrees that correlate with a weakness in mathematics and science. A weakness which often shows up earlier in education and results in such people avoiding Calculus in high school and college. As I take online courses, the limiting factor [after time] is the amount of mathematics I have at my finger tips. It is perhaps a common problem as even Einstein is said to have wished he had studied more mathematics. In the end, if computer science education is basically vocational, then perhaps it makes sense to replace Calculus I and II with Rails I and II. But that's not really what 'Computer Science education' usually means. That's IT and CIS.
- thrush 13y ago
  You are definitely correct that the traditional Computer Science education includes Calculus, but that does not mean that it should include Calculus. I would appreciate if there was empirical reasoning for why Calculus should be taught in Computer Science rather than the argument be "we need Calc because we're supposed to and every one else has it". It is easy to argue that Calculus helps, but it would also be easy to argue that various other fields of study would help (physical education, journalism, English to name a few). Full disclosure: I am a professional Full Stack Developer with Grad Level CS Education
  - MisterBastahrd 13y ago
    How are you going to understand statistics on a level to be able to build programmable models without an education in Calculus?
  - bradleyjg 13y ago
    That seems to be setting up an barrier for Calculus that nothing else has to face. Is there empirical evidence correlating an operating systems course to success in the field? More generally,a lot of the value to the student in a degree is signalling -- not only the bare fact of the degree itself, but also culturally. Even if an online education can't provide the first part yet, it can provide the second one. Dropping a reference to the Church–Turing thesis into the conversation at an interview might get you the job. Such "success" is independent of whether or not knowing the lambda calculus is actually helpful day to day once you're there.
    - argonaut 13y ago
      An OS course is directly under CS. Getting asked OS questions during a systems interview is normal. Getting asked calculus questions in most CS interviews (except the specific areas of machine learning and graphics, and even then pretty much never) is unheard of. When's the last time you were asked to differentiate something, integrate something, use Taylor series, double integrals, etc? Having to maximize/minimize some function might come up, but probably in an abstract sense.
dionidium 13y ago
and is generally taught in college regardless of whether you major in CS I don't know where you got this impression. Most liberal arts students never take calculus. And those students who do probably don't continue on to take Calc II and III, or linear algebra, or additional math electives, all of which are required in a typical CS program. Obviously, other engineering disciplines require these courses, but it's not correct to say that most college students know anything about math.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> That's because calculus is taught in high schools and is generally taught in college regardless of whether you major in CS (so for example someone wanting to self-teach CS after college will have taken calculus). The depth usually required for a CS degree is not usually required in high schools (and often not available there), nor is it usually a requirement for non-STEM degrees, and people wanting to self-teach CS after college will very often be non-STEM majors.

brudgers 13y ago

I'm not saying calculus is something that every computer science graduate uses in their daily professional life. But you're not going to meet a [US] computer science graduate who does not have it or a computer scientist who cannot perform it. And anything that says "here's what a computer science degree is" does a disservice by not mentioning it. My criticism is based on the same assumption that underpins your argument, that the people looking at this list already have a sufficient background in mathematics, or more generally that people looking at the article have general STEM training. Yet, just looking around HN, you'll see that many of those asking "Should I get a CS degree?" are people who just fell into programming, and in the larger world you have people moving into the field as a career change Think about all those bootcamps that market to liberal arts and business majors. These are people with degrees that correlate with a weakness in mathematics and science. A weakness which often shows up earlier in education and results in such people avoiding Calculus in high school and college. As I take online courses, the limiting factor [after time] is the amount of mathematics I have at my finger tips. It is perhaps a common problem as even Einstein is said to have wished he had studied more mathematics. In the end, if computer science education is basically vocational, then perhaps it makes sense to replace Calculus I and II with Rails I and II. But that's not really what 'Computer Science education' usually means. That's IT and CIS.

thrush 13y ago
You are definitely correct that the traditional Computer Science education includes Calculus, but that does not mean that it should include Calculus. I would appreciate if there was empirical reasoning for why Calculus should be taught in Computer Science rather than the argument be "we need Calc because we're supposed to and every one else has it". It is easy to argue that Calculus helps, but it would also be easy to argue that various other fields of study would help (physical education, journalism, English to name a few). Full disclosure: I am a professional Full Stack Developer with Grad Level CS Education
- MisterBastahrd 13y ago
  How are you going to understand statistics on a level to be able to build programmable models without an education in Calculus?
- bradleyjg 13y ago
  That seems to be setting up an barrier for Calculus that nothing else has to face. Is there empirical evidence correlating an operating systems course to success in the field? More generally,a lot of the value to the student in a degree is signalling -- not only the bare fact of the degree itself, but also culturally. Even if an online education can't provide the first part yet, it can provide the second one. Dropping a reference to the Church–Turing thesis into the conversation at an interview might get you the job. Such "success" is independent of whether or not knowing the lambda calculus is actually helpful day to day once you're there.
  - argonaut 13y ago
    An OS course is directly under CS. Getting asked OS questions during a systems interview is normal. Getting asked calculus questions in most CS interviews (except the specific areas of machine learning and graphics, and even then pretty much never) is unheard of. When's the last time you were asked to differentiate something, integrate something, use Taylor series, double integrals, etc? Having to maximize/minimize some function might come up, but probably in an abstract sense.

dionidium 13y ago

and is generally taught in college regardless of whether you major in CS I don't know where you got this impression. Most liberal arts students never take calculus. And those students who do probably don't continue on to take Calc II and III, or linear algebra, or additional math electives, all of which are required in a typical CS program. Obviously, other engineering disciplines require these courses, but it's not correct to say that most college students know anything about math.