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 ...
Calculus teaches about the physical world around us and not just approaches to math problems. When working complex issues using computer software it quickly shows who in room does not have an engineering education.
Calculus2->area
Calculus3->volume
DiffYQ -> nobody knows how EVERYTHING in the world works
If students weren’t forced to take all those useless DIE liberal classes where would all those liberals with useless degrees and blue hair get jobs. Blame the teachers for being dumb too. They are getting rid of AP math courses because few teachers know maffs.
Diffyq>freqeuncy.
I tell my family youngsters that the more math you know, the less people can trick you.
I thought I’d never use it, but wound up doing something pretty close to it 4 years ago when I studied the possible combinations and patterns from historical weather records in my area, how that changes across the months, and how that matches up with my power consumption habits each month. I did that to determine if decentralized solar would be good for my situation, knowing I couldn’t trust any “study” I read on such a politically slanted subject before I spent money on it.
Now that I have 4 years experience with solar, including studying my inverters’ telemetry recorded every 5 minutes, I can assure you that it works great for me but wouldn’t for most people (without being cost prohibitive). And now that the grunt work is figured out, there’s an easy algorithm to use if someone else is considering it, without having to do the deep dive I did. It’s somewhat analogous to our predecessors using calculus to prove the Pythagorean theorem, so now we can apply it with simple arithmetic and a little algebra.
Increasingly, rather than take an AP math course, the High School students take the course at a local community college. That applies to not only math but a whole host of courses such that over 4 years, the student graduates with a high school diploma and also an Associates degree from the community college.
Had 3 semesters of it. And one of DiffEq. And, in grad school, I had numerical analysis and advanced engineering mathematics.
Learn to code? Learn to integrate.
What can we.. derive from this?
calqueulus — an Ancient Greek word meaning that it will all line up for us.
During my career I had to use calculus periodically when compounding drugs and interpreting the bioavailablily of certain drugs in different animals due to the pH levels in the digestive system....gave me a headache.
Calculus is the only way engineers can solve non-linear problems.
Simple example, if a train is moving at constant speed, simple arithmetic can solve at what time it will reach the station.
However if water is leaking from a tank depending on volume of water remaining at any instant, you need calculus to determine when the tank will be empty.
I worked on designing machines subjected to highest impact loads in the world. It was for cold extrusion of steel for auto parts mostly in mass production. It needed severe shock absorbers to sustain supporting structures. Calculus came in handy to design the shock absorbers.
No. Students mostly do not apply themselves and parents force teachers to give passing grades anyway.
Please name those classes.
Yes that as well.
Isn’t it enough that they have mastered co0rrect condom placement in the dark??
So true
I knew some EEs who used Differential Equations when they were designing power distribution systems.
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I’ve heard that Kamala loves using slopes and pie charts when promoting new issues in front of an audience.
I believe that’s from basic algebra.
This is not a snide rhetorical question, but a quest for information: How do you teach something you don’t know, especially when it is deeply technical?
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