Posted on 02/11/2025 4:13:51 AM PST by MtnClimber
Unless young students learn the predicate mathematics for calculus, our nation will grind to a halt.
While Democrats focus on the liberal arts, which train students to be leftist activists beginning in grade school, it is the STEM studies that keep America functioning. As students ascend that ladder of mathematical logic, calculus becomes central to their ability to maintain our systems and invent new ones. Sadly, though, our schools are failing students, not just in teaching calculus but in teaching everything preceding calculus.
It is widely recognized among today’s undergraduates that the STEM field is at once among the most rewarding and the most challenging, promising well-compensated employment in the future while also demanding devotion and consistent concentration in the present.
A principal source of the demanding nature of the STEM curriculum is its solid mathematical core, the centerpiece of which is calculus, a cause of both delight and frustration for generations of college students.
Calculus, the mathematical analysis of change of continuous functions, was invented in the late 17th century by both Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, who were working independently of each other. Because Newton’s notational system was awkward and inconvenient, whereas the Leibniz notational system was intuitively appealing and easy to use, it is the Leibniz notation system that is in use today.
Because of the hierarchical structure of the topics in STEM, in which mathematics explains computer science and physics, physics explains chemistry, and chemistry explains biology, calculus finds itself cast in the role of the gatekeeper to STEM. And with that gatekeeper role in mind it would be highly illuminating to be a mouse in the corner of the first quarter college calculus classroom as the professor brings the daily class to a close.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I was an Engineering Technician and was taking my final quarter of Calculus (multi-variable). My boss came up to me and asked me to figure out the volume of a landfill mound. It was sloped multiple directions, and one end was bigger than the other. I thought this would be a good use to put into practice of what I was learning. I went to my math professor and presented it to him so he could help me set up the problem. It took us a few hours to set it up and a couple more to come up with a solution.
I also ran the problem using the Average End Area Method where you take the two end areas, average them then multiply it by the length (simple algebra) and it takes about a minute to solve. Both answers were close but the time to solve it was hours different.
I could have also used a computer but then I would have had to draw it and then process it.
Time is money...
I afree...calculus just screens for learning ability (or motivation)
I have and lots of it. Hell, colleges closed both times when Trump was elected!
Stage of Life
bttt
I can't seem to add or subtract anymore without a calculator.
The only time I use geometry is laying out a 3-4-5 right triangle to make sure a project is square.
I graduated in 1985 from SUNY ESF @ Syracuse U.
I'm a big fan of SIN (Sir Isaac Newton). Y is that?
He was dedicated to problem-solving, which is the heart of applied mathematics.
solvo, Latin: From se- (“away”) + luō (“to untie, set free, separate”)
The root concept is to break down something into its individual parts, to built back better so to speak.
Sir Isaac Newton is world-famous for doing exactly that, applying the principle to light itself.
"Like many basic geometric terms, the word prism (Greek: πρίσμα, romanized: prisma, lit. 'something sawed') was first used in Euclid's Elements."
René Descartes is famous for the x, y, z diagram of physical [Euclidean] space. He saw something...
Ingenious! Do you see what he did there? He literally showed the way of the light, for everyone -- no matter what wavelength you're on -- to be able to escape out of prism!René Descartes had seen light separated into the colors of the rainbow by glass or water,[5] though the source of the color was unknown. Isaac Newton's 1666 experiment of bending white light through a prism demonstrated that all the colors already existed in the light, with different color "corpuscles" fanning out and traveling with different speeds through the prism.
1666:
September 2 – The Great Fire of London begins as a blaze in a bakery owned by Thomas Farriner on Pudding Lane, near London Bridge.
>>>
Date unknown 🤔
Isaac Newton uses a prism to split sunlight, as referenced in his alchemical works as Lux Dei, into the component colours of the optical spectrum, assisting the understanding of the scientific nature of light. He also develops differential calculus simultaneously with Leibniz. His discoveries this year lead to it being referred to as his Annus mirabilis or Newton's "Year of the Morning Star".
Egads, did any of these guys ever sleep?! The simple answer is that it's not any work at all if it's love!
The above storyline was all recorded right here:
What a shame. I’ll just stick with books rather than go back in there. Universities give you long lasting bad dreams anyway.
I have a hobby machine shop in my basement, all manual machines. It is "trig or die".
Sir Isaac Newton had gravitas.................
They really should not let that Sesame Street Chef teach math. Mine was from Pakistan.
Just remember SOH CAH TOA
Sine of the angle = Opposite side/Hypotenuse side
Cosine of the angle = Adjacent Side/Hypotenuse side
Tangent of the angle = Opposite Side/Adjacent Side
I've trained cashiers. Newbies aren't deficient in education; they're just not used to thinking like cashiers. It's a mindset prior to a skillset.
Once they're taught to count up instead of subtract down and to expect that a customer may give them $20.04 for a $4.79 purchase, it clicks and they get it.
Other than math and some sciences, books will give you a far better education. If you have enough math and science in your background, the books may be better than classrooms.
I should mention that I’m really lazy in my old age.
Thank you for that. I’ll give it a look. Probably a good passtime.
That "19-year-old DOGE staffer" must be related.
In ME I didn’t have to use Calculus because the formula makers already had.
I understood Calculus and how it was applied. That helped, expecially when dealing with the Math guys.
bfl
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