“Regardless, we need to push more advanced math at high school, IMHO. They shouldn’t be seeing calculus for the first time in their first year of college.”
I was in the humanities, so maybe this doesn’t apply. But I got to calculus and trigonometry in high school and passed the basic minimum requirements to get into normal college math classes. But once I was there, all they required of me was algebra. Which was weird, since that kicked me back to, like, the 8th grade.
I just can't help but wonder if they're poorly prepared. There's no reason to believe that kids who like math and science have any better reading, writing and analytical skills than the rest.
Even in my day, the science geeks were notoriously poor at spelling and English Composition, but they could probably write circles around today's youth. This is all a generalization, of course, some sort of bell curve still exists.
I don't often perform integrals and derivatives, but I find that recognizing the concepts is key to understanding many things about the world around me in my day to day life.
Right!!!!
Exactly the same here, I passed up to Trig and Comp Sci C++ AP in high school, then as a Poly Sci major had to take the normal college math for a course or two.
The college math was like 8th grade math, but I’m not going to lie, I’m glad it was. I had no interest in furthering my on paper math skills. It really just wasn’t something I needed to be successful (and even though I’m a business man, I don’t ever have to do much beyond some complex excel formulas- helpful sure, but I could easily get by without.