At my university in the late 90s, I was required to take calculus for my CS curriculum, but no statistics courses, which I always found funny because our department was "Computer Science and Statistics". With "Data Science" (i.e. statistics) and "Machine Learning" (i.e. statistics) becoming so commonplace, I sure hope that has changed.
The case for ending calculus requirements for science majors
31–40 of 142 posts
Re: The case for ending calculus requirements for science majors
#32It's worth remembering that math departments have a large service component: They teach courses for majors in other departments, because that is what those other departments want - and in fact, teaching other majors produces most of the credit hours taught in math departments. So they tell us what math courses their majors will take, and sometimes even what topics their majors need to see. We just do what we're told!…
I remember hearing in college (a couple decades ago) that Chemical Engineering students needed to know a lot about solving differential equations.
In the math department, I was told by professors that a lot of other departments were requiring the "pre-calculus" course without requiring calculus as a means of weeding out poorer performing students.
Re: The case for ending calculus requirements for science majors
#33I like calculus and I've always liked it more than other branches of mathematics. That's not to say that I consider myself a true expert in the subject as I'm not (I still find some aspects of the subject difficult). I like calculus because it allows us to put a measure on how things in our world change, it greatly simplifies our calculations of the rate at which these changes occur than we would otherwise be without…
that's funny, I ended up buying the book based on exactly the same HN comment and received it today. The idea that calculus could be learned based on the dual numbers is really intriguing to me, especially because I've been studying them in conjunction with their cousins the double (or split-complex) numbers, and trying to understand the whole Cayley-Klein geometry framework, for some years now.
It's sort of a never-ending spiral of research, where I never seem to be able to get to the core of the subject (geometry). Today I am looking at Stillwell's "The Four Pillars of Geometry", in yet another attempt to understand the cross-ratio, and in particular, Von Staudt's reconstruction of arithmetic based on projective geometry. Of course one could go deeper, to Klein and Russell's criticisms of Von Staudt and so on...
Each time I think to close my hand on the golden bird, she flits from my grasp.
Re: The case for ending calculus requirements for science majors
#34Require both.
because sure, p hacking, but i’ll tell you this for free: you will not get far in any discipline before you are whacked in the face with a differential equation based model of a system, and if you cannot grok that you are totally hosed.
Re: The case for ending calculus requirements for science majors
#35It's worth remembering that math departments have a large service component: They teach courses for majors in other departments, because that is what those other departments want - and in fact, teaching other majors produces most of the credit hours taught in math departments. So they tell us what math courses their majors will take, and sometimes even what topics their majors need to see. We just do what we're told!…
I remember hearing in college (a couple decades ago) that Chemical Engineering students needed to know a lot about solving differential equations. In the math department, I was told by professors that a lot of other departments were requiring the "pre-calculus" course without requiring calculus as a means of weeding out poorer performing students.
> I remember hearing in college (a couple decades ago) that Chemical Engineering students needed to know a lot about solving differential equations.
That stands to reason. Describing the dynamic behavior of a chemical system -- e.g. the amounts of different reactants and products over time, the temperature and pressure of the system, etc -- is exactly the sort of task that differential equations are perfect for.
Re: The case for ending calculus requirements for science majors
#36Require both. because sure, p hacking, but i’ll tell you this for free: you will not get far in any discipline before you are whacked in the face with a differential equation based model of a system, and if you cannot grok that you are totally hosed.
Yeah, I agree. I lamented my lack of early education in statistics later in life. Now, at the time I was studying calculus-based courses, I didn't like them either. But it didn't take long into various quantitative fields where it clearly made a difference.
The lack of statistical understanding by the general population should not come at the expense of calculus-based mathematics. Furthermore, simply increasing the knowledge of statistics in peoples' minds won't solve all the problems that people see with innumerate individuals; a significant problem is that statistical reasoning often runs counter to human intuition and emotion. No amount of knowledge defeats those in all cases.
Re: The case for ending calculus requirements for science majors
#37Interesting article. I think it would be a nice experiment to run an introduction to proof course, including something like Martin Gardner's puzzles, to show how proof works, and the power of thinking carefully and building up arguments (and using some elementary arithmetic to help). I think that'd go a long way towards increasing mathematical thinking with minimal suffering, like memorization of integrals. It should provide a more gentle introduction to the heart of maths.
Re: The case for ending calculus requirements for science majors
#38Basic differential and integral calculus should be taught in high school.
Re: The case for ending calculus requirements for science majors
#39Remind me why there are no downvotes on articles again?
There's a "flag" option if you think it doesn't belong here. There's also a "hide" option if you just don't want to see it. These aren't hard to find, they're both available under the submission title.
Re: The case for ending calculus requirements for science majors
#40Very much yes.
I am currently trying to tutor my daughter through college-level calculus. She wants to be a civil engineer. Civil engineers, obviously, need to know calculus.
But calculus is not being taught to her by engineers. It is being taught by mathematicians. And as part of teaching it, they are attempting to instill a "mathematical mindset". Which means, in practice, that it is an entry to proofs.
Every proof has a trick. If you can see the trick, you can generally figure out how to do the proof. If you can't see the trick, you can't. The same thing is true with all of the very tricky limits they are making her learn to solve.
I hold a PhD in aerospace engineering with a minor in applied mathematics. I specialized in control theory. I use calculus every day of my life. In twenty years of engineering practice I have never once had to take a difficult limit, and can probably count on one hand the number of times I've had to take a limit of any kind.
I had a heart-to-heart with her about this today. I told her that what she actually needed to understand about calculus was how to use it to solve engineering problems, not how to manipulate polynomial fractions, chain trig identities, and do substitutions of variables. And she was not going to learn that in this class, but that she nevertheless needed to learn the tricky algebra and epsilon-delta proofs simply because this was a hoop she needed to jump through to get to the actual engineering classes.
There was a not inconsiderable amount of cursing, but I understood because I hit the same wall, just thirty years prior. Nothing has changed.