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I think you should learn calculus for the same reason you read poetry, because it's beautiful.:)
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<p>This made me spit soda all over my keyboard. </p>
<p>I agree with the sentiment. It just strikes me as funny. ;)</p>
<p>I agree with the sentiment on calculus - there's a beauty in it. And it allows you to see a lot of other things in the sciences. I do like the liberal arts approach but it means that you have to get an advanced degree to get deeply into the fun stuff.</p>
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I think you should learn calculus for the same reason you read poetry, because it's beautiful.
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<p>Math is beautiful, but there are many other areas of math that are more beautiful than calculus. </p>
<p>Math departments don't offer bazillions of sections of calculus because it's beautiful. They do so because other departments expect them to do so. </p>
<p>Some of those other departments expect them to do so because they actually USE calculus extensively in their disciplinary courses (e.g., physics), but other departments use very little or no actual calculus in their disciplinary courses (e.g., general business administration), but they like to use calculus as a convenient "entry barrier" to filter out students who can't think analytically. (Yes, I know there are "rocket scientists" on Wall Street who use high-powered mathematical techniques including some that draw on mathematical statistics whose foundations include calculus, but the overwhelming majoring of business majors do not use calculus in their courses nor in their later professional lives.)</p>
<p>Personally, I think many areas of discrete math (including game theory, number theory, combinatorics, fractals, mathematical logic) are more beautiful than calculus. In addition to being more beautiful, many discrete math topics are arguably more useful to many students, especially in this day and age of inexpensive computing. And they could the serve purpose of selecting students who can think analytically just as well, if not better, than calculus.</p>
<p>Why not? Agree with posters who support requiring math skills. There are so many details learned in any school that are forgotten, but the understanding often is retained. I couldn't pass most math/science tests today despite a chemistry major, but understand why things happen as they do. Being exposed to calculus isn't required everywhere, but being exposed to it makes a vast difference in understanding how so many equations one memorized in any precalc science class came to be. Equally important as learning literature, history, etc in knowing how our world works. Part of a well rounded liberal education. College is for an education, not job skills, although it is nice to get those with the rest of the learning. A last thought- taking math courses teaches one how to think as much as reading literature, studying humanities and social sciences do.</p>
<p>I can be an informed investor (and am) without calculus.
I can be an informed and passionate auto buff (and I am) without calculus.</p>
<p>FWIW, I would require Econ, but not calculus.</p>
<p>I wish we required more math as a country, not less. Look at the mess we're in, because people couldn't do the math... People who let someone sell them a mortgage they couldn't afford... people who sold too many unaffordable mortgages...</p>
<p>The problem wasn't the math, it was that no one had enough historical perspective to look back even to the Enron years.</p>
<p>Greed + buying politicians = looking the other way. If you're a newspaper or financial magazine and real estate companies and mutual fund companies are paying for ads in your publication, are you going to expose their products as dangerous? There are so many websites that wrote about the excesses and bad products years ago. The information was out there. I'm sure many CCers are familiar with the websites. Back then, people thought you were a kook if you talked about bubbles. Just like in the internet days.</p>
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FWIW, I would require Econ, but not calculus.
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<p>Micro Econ and Physics can be both taught without calculus, but they are both much easier to understand with a basic knowledge of derivatives and integrals.</p>
<p>My suggestion is that the opportunity cost of requiring calc is too high for a non-math liberal arts major.</p>
<p>Algebra is used often. Statistics even more! I don't know why Calculus is given more importance in high school than statistics is.... it ill prepares the 80% of the population that needs a good understanding of statistics and probablity in favor of the 20% that will occassionally use calculus. A poor choice.</p>
<p>I think most of us technical people feel the same way about creative writing classes we're forced to take in high school!</p>
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there IS a tryranny of algebra, all reinforced by the mindless national chatter of how the US is "falling behind" because our kids arent doing math as wll as they do in singapore or china or india. well, there were a lot of brilliant mathematical minds working on wall street the last few years devising a lot of sophisticated financial instruments -- and look what its gotten us.
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<p>This is really depressing to read. You blame math for the financial mess? That's just sad. There definitely aren't all that many brilliant mathematical minds anywhere on Wall Street, and of those that are, very few are making any decisions of any kind. Meanwhile, we really are falling behind other nations whose kids, simply put, can do math, while ours can't.</p>
<p>I think its useful for more than just science and engineering, but not always necessary. It is a tool that helps you learn later on. Thus its doable, just harder, to learn economics or complete a challenging bschool degree or MBA without a grasp of calculus. Same for advanced statistics, which you need for many graduate programs and/or a career in research (not necessarily the sciences). It's a tool for learning. </p>
<p>And it's difficult to know what path one wants to go down well in advance or whether they will find it useful or not for further learning. </p>
<p>Moreover, beyond being a tool for learning, advanced math can change the way you think and learn later. Like learning another language, or learning a creative art: even if you never go to a country where you will use the language you acquired, or you never again have an opportunity to show off your creative talent, having gone through the process of learning a language or an art forever shapes and influences your mind.</p>
<p>My thanks to all responding to this thread. Since I started it, let me get another word or two or three into the discussion in counter response.</p>
<p>Someone said calculus is like poetry, you should take it because it's beautiful. Well, you know the expression "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder?" How many schools REQUIRE poetry? My point is about schools that require students to take courses like calc, geometry and trig. Statistics are different. I don't even consider stats to be math. I took four stats courses to get my MBA, each one increasingly challenging. But stats is an educational experience that is useful in business and life. Why do I need to know calc and trig? Why do I need to know poetry? For what? If it's about being well-rounded, let the student define well-rounded.</p>
<p>Someone else posited that if not for required stuff like calc, geometry, poetry, trig, there wouldn't be enough courses to last four years. Well, why should an undergraduate degree require four years? On what stone tablets is it written? It's a tradition, nothing more. A really wasteful tradition, if you ask me. </p>
<p>I graduated cum laude from a well known private university that operates under the auspices of the Catholic Church. It was one of those "win one for the Gipper" type schools (although i'm not Catholic). I would've been Magna Cum Laude except that I was forced to take a stupid Calculus course, a subject I knew I would never need as long as I lived. When I begged the administration for an explanation as to why I had to take Calculus in order to graduate, not a single person could give me an answer other than "you're required to take it." I did, and I struggled like hell. I had to go for extra tutoring to pull a C-. That and a physics course (something else I've never used) in which I pulled a "D" killed me. I've been bitter ever since.</p>
<p>And if certain courses are "fundamental" and necessary, no matter which career track you intend to pursue, why is it that prestigious colleges like Amherst and Brown supposedly allow you to pick whatever you want?</p>
<p>To the person who wrote that he didn't consider calc, geometry and trig "advanced math," here's my definition of advanced math: Any math you will never need for the rest of your life. Which means anything beyond Algebra II college prep. is probably superfluous for most people. That's my opinion, anyway. </p>
<p>My baby girl will be sitting in a college classroom one year from today. It makes me cringe to see that when it comes to college officials being dictators little has changed in 30 years except co-ed dorms. And that's one change I wish never happened.</p>
<p>I hear your frustration and part of me agrees with you. When it comes to some particular courses, I do not see why every student needs to take them. </p>
<p>However, I also do not believe course requirements for a university degree must or should necessarily be determined on the basis of what has practical and obvious relevance. Most of the arts courses I took, heck most of my undergraduate courses in all areas, had no direct obvious impact on my life or career. I do not know where I 'use them'. But then I didn't go to a vocational trade school; I purposefully chose a university to be educated. </p>
<p>And is it really relevance you mean or is it something else? Take your four stats course: I get the value of intro stats, but how did it help to have time series, or SEM, or Hierarchical linear modelling, or whatever you took later? Or is it just that you 'got' those so you see their point, whereas for courses you struggled with, you could not? Should we just offer courses that one personally can 'get' and therefore see its value afterwards? </p>
<p>Come to think of it, some of the BEST education I have received was in courses I can't for the life of me think of how I've needed them, or even used them since I took them. But they changed my view of the world, expanded my mind, taught me different ways of thinking, lead me to different knowledge domains I did not know existed. </p>
<p>Some of our education is directly applicable and obvious, some is extremely useful but we aren't aware of how it has impacted us, and some simply grows, shapes, exposes, and changes our minds. That's a good thing.</p>
<p>"And if certain courses are "fundamental" and necessary, no matter
which career track you intend to pursue, why is it that prestigious
colleges like Amherst and Brown supposedly allow you to pick whatever
you want?"</p>
<p>I'll ask a coworker about it that has an MSCS from Brown. I had a look
at course requirements for a few CS courses at Amherst and one would
think that there are some math requirements for some of these courses
but they aren't listed. Perhaps the advisor plays a much bigger role
in meeting degree requirements. I have a niece there but I probably
won't see her until after the fall semester.</p>
<p>"To the person who wrote that he didn't consider calc, geometry and
trig "advanced math," here's my definition of advanced math: Any math
you will never need for the rest of your life. Which means anything
beyond Algebra II college prep. is probably superfluous for most
people. That's my opinion, anyway."</p>
<p>You don't know where your life will take you in the future so you
don't know if you'll be in the superfluous camp or the needed camp.
There's a common refrain in the major boards for those trying to
decide between business and engineering, premed and engineering
or most anything else and engineering. Try engineering - if you
don't like it, you can transfer to something else. It's pretty
hard to do it the other way around.</p>
<p>"My baby girl will be sitting in a college classroom one year from
today. It makes me cringe to see that when it comes to college
officials being dictators little has changed in 30 years except co-ed
dorms. And that's one change I wish never happened."</p>
<p>My daughter (hs junior) is taking precalc and writing at the local
CC. She hates math but is giving it the good old college try.</p>
<p>I never looked at math as a collection of facts to remember. Math is the subject (only one that I know) that develops analytical skills. Facts could be retreived from computer data bases. Ability to analyze is extremely important in many professions and absolutely needed in engineering, medicine,.... Computer programming is an example of profession where analytical skills are the only practical pre-requisite for success, the rest is easily learned at work (new programming language, sofware package ......).</p>
<p>Analytical skills? I learned those in law school, despite having stopped math after Geometry.</p>
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How many schools REQUIRE poetry
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<p>EVERY high school school in California requires poetry reading in honors Literature/English classes. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>But, may I suggest your baby girl not follow in your college footsteps? There are colleges that do not have ANY core nor distribution requirements.</p>