We were just talking about this over lunch yesterday (software engineers at a medical device company). I won’t dismiss calculus, but it was generally agreed that linear algebra and statistics were most important, at least for what we’re doing.

Must be something common about medical devices. When not doing linear algebra and stats, I need optimizations from the wheelhouses of linear programming and numerical analysis.

Although for statistics (and probability as well), Calculus has a way of sneaking in there.

not sure why anyone downvoted this, because in my stats for engineers class we were doing double integrals

Also I'm not so bearish on letting people choose not to be smarter.

I think society is better off giving people the best means to achieve the intellectual goal they want, rather than forcing a greater number to learn beyond what they are compelled to. The kind of people I enjoy talking to are all the kind of people who would learn this stuff anyway as a matter of habit. My bookshelf is not full because of a state mandate.

You need a lot more than calculus to actually be useful at doing that though, unless you mean just throwing AI at the problem.

If you want to write a CFD solver then you need a lot more than just blindly learnt calculus. If you want to blow up the world using fuzzily applied financial models then you might not.... (you do actually)

i'm learning ML now from an accomplished researcher

to understand the courses we need stats, linear, and some calc 3