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Re:Someone Has to Run the Fabs by fastball on Tuesday May 04, 2021 @06:30PM (#27043678)
So the solution to poor instruction is to drop it?

Math is a useful skill for everyone, including calculus. Not everybody goes to university, so we should teach it in HS.

Re:Someone Has to Run the Fabs by intergalplan on Tuesday May 04, 2021 @06:52PM (#27043860)
Approaching 40. Haven't ever needed calculus (or Trig) for anything. Sometimes I make an effort to pick math back up just because I feel like I ought to, but it'd be so purely a hobby with no practical use that I have a hard time keeping at it. Some of it's neat but it's not really any more valuable to my life than doing even-less-useful-but-more-fun recreational math puzzles.

Most people's lives and jobs involve even less math than mine does.

More stats probably would have been helpful. Anything less-obviously-useful needs a hell of a lot more emphasis on what it's used for and how to apply it than I ever received, IMO, unless you're a pure-math major, and certainly in k-12 since almost none of the kids are going to be math majors.

Re:Someone Has to Run the Fabs by AnimalMuppet on Tuesday May 04, 2021 @07:34PM (#27044189)
I have a degree in math and physics. I only used one tiny bit of calculus once in my career - say, maybe a month total...

... and then I got a new job when I was 43, in medical x-ray machines. Suddenly everything was 3D coordinate transforms, Fourier transforms, and integrals, plus radiation physics.

You don't need or use this stuff... until you do.

Re:Someone Has to Run the Fabs by fastball on Tuesday May 04, 2021 @07:11PM (#27044003)
I'm 25 and I use calc and trig all the time.

I used trig yesterday to figure out what angle I needed to cut a board (I'm building a barn).

I used calculus a few weeks ago to help solve an issue I was having with a water tank.

Re:Someone Has to Run the Fabs by intergalplan on Tuesday May 04, 2021 @07:30PM (#27044155)
Hahaha, see, I'm so terrible at both measuring and cutting that I'd never expect anything I'm building to come out remotely right if I needed to start doing much with angles that aren't 90, 45, or 30, with hard pre-sets on whatever tools I'm using because if I'm setting the angle myself it's gonna be off by enough to ruin it, no matter how precise I think I've got it. No way I'm not gonna end up working around or re-doing it with something simpler if I start bringing trigonometry to the party. I'm lucky when my straight cuts that I measured and marked 3 times "just to be sure" don't somehow end up wrong.

[EDIT] actually, I take that back, I do sometimes work with odd angles but never do it without a physical template built and fitted, because attempts to do it "cute" or figure it out purely on paper have a history of being hilariously wrong (when I do them) even when the math is 100% correct (according to the evidently-not-precise-enough measurements).