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A lot of effort and money has been spent to make mathematics seem essential to everybody's daily life. There are even calculus textbooks showing how to calculate -- I am not making this up and in fact I taught from such a book -- the rate at which the fluid level in a martini glass will go down, assuming, of course, that one sips differentiably.
TheKenoshaKid · 4722 days ago · link ·
But how many people actually take calculus? Not many.
I would say at a bare minimum math should be taught through geometry. Many tradespeople (carpenters, pipe fitters, etc) use geometry extensively at work. People do DIY home improvement all the time, too. It's important for people to know how to build things. Beyond that though, math is pretty esoteric. Still, the opportunity to pursue these courses should be available to students.
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I agree, arithmetic, algebra, and geometry are part of basic numeracy. I think what the author is railing against are the attempts to turn as many people as possible into potential engineers and financiers. Math matters, but trying to turn an entire society into Wall Street and Silicon Valley is a recipe for educational disaster.
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thenewgreen · 4722 days ago · link ·
- trying to turn an entire society into Wall Street and Silicon Valley is a recipe for educational disaster.
I always felt bad for the nursing students forced to take two semesters of the science/engineering statistics. Fortunately the professors generally found out why students were taking the class and gave a little slack to students who were in over their head but forced to take it as a requirement.
I'm in the sciences and, outside my work, I use very little math on a regular basis. Even in my work, the math I use tends to be pretty basic. I think maybe stressing the utility of maths beyond a certain level is misleading, but that doesn't necessarily mean its place in education is wrong. At a high school level it is great at providing exposure to abstract ideas and logic. Keeping it utilitarian would make it dull and reinforce notions that school is dull and intellectual pursuits are boring.
forwardslash · 4722 days ago · link ·
Calculus may not be essential to one's life, but I think basic logic and proofs are. If you can't see that just because p implies q, q doesn't necessarily imply p, it's going to affect you more than if you don't know what the integral of e^x is.
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clairewalsh · 4722 days ago · link ·
I didn't take calculus but am able to get by without it. I agree that tradespeople use math extensively, but for the rest of us, it is fairly infrequent. When I need math-type knowledge, I have google help me. It's not the most intellectual way to go about solving a problem, but it works for me.