An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

Re:An update on the campaign to defend serious math educatio... by TaylorAlexander on Tuesday April 26, 2022 @03:03PM (#31171698)

I'm certainly very happy that I learned calculus in high school. I then got a 5 on the AP calculus test and tested in to third quarter calculus in college. It was important as an engineer to understand those concepts. I don't use them too often and I forgot a lot of it, but I really enjoyed it and I think it would be unfortunate if other students did not have that opportunity. I agree stats would be great too!

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Re:An update on the campaign to defend serious math educatio... by canadaduane on Tuesday April 26, 2022 @03:32PM (#31172093)

As a software engineer, I wish I had learned stats instead of calculus. Some exposure would have been great, but the high school & university requirements were way off target wrt its usefulness in computer science. It was a painful process of learning, failing, and re-taking calculus, squeaking by, only to never use it again. I was a straight-A student otherwise.

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Re:An update on the campaign to defend serious math educatio... by TaylorAlexander on Tuesday April 26, 2022 @04:50PM (#31173003)

I get that. As a robotics engineer, some cursory understanding of integrals and derivatives is useful.

But what I really mean is that, as a person, I just really enjoyed calculus. I found I was very good at it, and that experience helped me understand why some people choose to focus their career on pure mathematics. I am happy I took calculus not as a means of training for the workforce, but because I found it enriching on its own. And I never would have taken all that time if it wasn't offered to me as a class in public school that counted as credits towards graduation.

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Re:An update on the campaign to defend serious math educatio... by raegis on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @01:30AM (#31176658)

Why is this either/or? I took both calculus and statistics in college. Were you forced to choose one or the other?

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Re:An update on the campaign to defend serious math educatio... by leaflets2 on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @05:51AM (#31178100)

Seems to me that calculus was required, but stats wasn't, and at the time it didn't seem that important?

Where I grew up btw we studied only calculus, integrals and stuff, no stats, in high school. (Stats in uni)

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