Do the math: too much calculus? (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: Do the math: too much calculus? (2012)

#21

Post by ebola1717 » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 7:17 PM UTC

mhb wrote: post #11

castratikron wrote: post #10

AP Calculus was the most useful course I took in high school. It was rigorous, and I scored high enough on the exam to get two free college classes and start freshman year at the sophomore level, which left room at the end of my college career for more specialized courses. There should be some vetting process for the students who want to take AP classes. A lot of the students in my AP Calculus class had no business b…

Isn't it kind of weird that a college won't let you take whatever math class you want?

At my university, they would usually let students sit in on any lecture classes they wanted. But students taking classes they aren't qualified for isn't the most efficient use of educational resources

Re: Do the math: too much calculus? (2012)

#22

Post by gnarbarian » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 7:18 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #16

gnarbarian wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Tuition only covers a portion of a student's cost to a university. I think it's around 30% at mine. 1) If a class is way over your head the university is wasting money having you there. 2) Having stragglers in the class that are far behind slows down the whole class. 3) Every seat that is filled with a student who is not ready for the class is a seat that can't be filled with a student who could actually pass it.

> Tuition only covers a portion of a student's cost to a university. I think it's around 30% at mine. Where are you getting that from? Are you just dividing the tuition revenue by the university's budget? Because the university is there for a lot more than educating undergrads.

Most universities aren't primarily focused on research.[1] They are there to educate students. Research does occur at every university, but looking at their research budget as a fraction of their whole budget will show what sort of institution it is.

Even if you subtract the research budget out first you will still arrive at a figure less than 50% for most universities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Classification_of_Ins...

edit:

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75

Re: Do the math: too much calculus? (2012)

#23

Post by jameshart » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 7:20 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #19

baldfat wrote: post #6

I think we teach Calculus wrong in a deep fundamental way. We should incorporate more high math concepts earlier into education BUT people are always afraid of anything past 4th grade math! "A minority of students then wend their way through geometry, trigonometry and, finally, calculus, which is considered the pinnacle of high-school-level math. But this progression actually “has nothing to do with how people think,…

I would have done much better in math if the class after Geometry was something other than pre-trig.

As an alien to the US education system, I am always completely confused by these 'pre-' course designations. What on earth is 'pre-trig' or 'pre-calc'? I mean, I got all the way up to undergraduate level in mathematics and I never needed to learn 'pre-' anything.

Re: Do the math: too much calculus? (2012)

#24

Post by sotojuan » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 7:21 PM UTC

castratikron wrote: post #10

AP Calculus was the most useful course I took in high school. It was rigorous, and I scored high enough on the exam to get two free college classes and start freshman year at the sophomore level, which left room at the end of my college career for more specialized courses. There should be some vetting process for the students who want to take AP classes. A lot of the students in my AP Calculus class had no business b…

> another guy didn't even take the AP exam, and another guy just put his head down on the desk during the AP exam.

I don't know anything about these people but there's two "good" reasons for this:

* Some colleges don't take certain AP credits e.g. the college I went to didn't take AP Bio credit, so I didn't take the exam for it when I took the class

* Some high schools give GPA boosts for AP classes. For example, an A in an AP class was worth a 5.0 vs a 4.0 in a regular class. Some students may think it's worth it even if they don't do that well

In general I agree with you because my AP Calc class wasn't rigorous or interesting at all. It was "here's how you do X, now do X 100 times for homework and take a test on it".

> A lot of the students in my AP Calculus class had no business being there

Maybe I'm cynical but this was the case at my college Calculus class as well. The entire back row was basically people cheating. There'll always be lazy people in freshman and sophomore courses.

Re: Do the math: too much calculus? (2012)

#25

Post by supahfly_remix » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 7:22 PM UTC

CalChris wrote: post #9

baldfat wrote: post #6

I think we teach Calculus wrong in a deep fundamental way. We should incorporate more high math concepts earlier into education BUT people are always afraid of anything past 4th grade math! "A minority of students then wend their way through geometry, trigonometry and, finally, calculus, which is considered the pinnacle of high-school-level math. But this progression actually “has nothing to do with how people think,…

Berkeley EECS grad. I didn't go the device physics route but I used calculus about twice in 4 years except in physics classes.

Circuit analysis turns differential equations into algebra, so you might have been using calculus more than you realize.

Re: Do the math: too much calculus? (2012)

#26

Post by euroclydon » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 7:24 PM UTC

I have a 5th and a 6th grader. I'm going to buy them an educational copy of Maple soon, so they can have a beautiful platform to plot 2-D and 3-D graphs, solve equations, do derivatives and integrals, and factor algebraic expressions.

I want them to do all this in high school, whether or not they take Calculus, so they can get an intuition for it. Then they can memorize the trig rules in college.

Re: Do the math: too much calculus? (2012)

#27

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 7:24 PM UTC

castratikron wrote: post #10

AP Calculus was the most useful course I took in high school. It was rigorous, and I scored high enough on the exam to get two free college classes and start freshman year at the sophomore level, which left room at the end of my college career for more specialized courses. There should be some vetting process for the students who want to take AP classes. A lot of the students in my AP Calculus class had no business b…

> There should be some vetting process for the students who want to take AP classes.

Is this not usually the case? My high school used to make you fill out a short form and make the case for why you should be allowed in the AP class, and my senior year I had to go in and speak with a counselor who was concerned that I was taking too many. Sure, it was a pointless hurdle for me personally, but I can see how it would be a good idea for students who don't realize what they're getting into, or who are trying to take the course because their parents want them to.

Re: Do the math: too much calculus? (2012)

#28

Post by cgag » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 7:26 PM UTC

jimmydddd wrote: post #13

For lower level math, my kids seemed to revisit the same subjects over and over from k-9th grades. For example, mean, median and mode, year after year. The first few years it was just robotic problem solving. After a few years, they started to get a broader understanding. Maybe some people need to take several passes through the higher level stuff too.I guess the problem is that there is not enough time.

I believe there's decent support for the idea that you could just teach them nothing until they reached the age of understanding, and theyd pick it up pretty much just as quick without the years of rote.

Re: Do the math: too much calculus? (2012)

#29

Post by hood_syntax » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 7:26 PM UTC

Yhippa wrote: post #7

> Too many students experience a secondary-school calculus course that drills on the techniques and procedure that will enable them to successfully answer standard problems but are never challenged to encounter and understand the conceptual foundations of calculus,” he said. As I get older I've realized that I learn better when I understand the concepts about things. I then get excited to apply what I've learned into…

Conceptual background is so important for understanding something. I was lucky to have a great teacher for BC calc, and I got an easy 5 on the exam. The concepts make sense, they are consistent, and they build on each other, so with the right progression of ideas students can get a lot farther than they would otherwise.

Re: Do the math: too much calculus? (2012)

#30

Post by hanoz » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 7:26 PM UTC

I remember once when when driving I was pleased when it occurred to me that I should be seeking to minimise the third derivative of distance with respect to time for the comfort of my passengers. That was the sum total of calculus's contribution to my adult life. Not sure it was worth it.