I read somewhere that when you learn calculus it is like having a third arm. In other words, it is useful. Does anyone who knows calculus find it useful outside of careers such as mathematics, physics, and that sort of thing?
It’s useful for certain things that few people need to do, but many want to do - making money, for example. Statistics is more useful for that, but calculus is helpful, when it comes to deciding when to invest, when to divest, etc. Calculus is also useful in engineering, architecture, but again, people did without for centuries.
Personally I don’t think it’s like having a third arm. More like having a garlic press. Situationally it is extremely useful, more so if you tend to do certain types of things; however, many people get by fine without it, even those who could potentially use it can use work arounds and never miss it. But experts in the indicated fields wouldn’t be without it, and would find its lack intensely frustrating.
Might come in handy during cocktail party conversation.
One of the beautiful things about calculus is algebra finally made sense.
Actuaries and some of the more mathematically inclined business and investing occupations are all about calculus-based statistics, I hear. Isn’t calculus used in computing and simulation stuff, too? I dunno, I don’t know much about math, but that’s what I hear. I just recently took algebra for the first time (they made me take geometry twice in high school because they didn’t believe me that I already took it and was supposed to take algebra, so I graduated HS without it and up until I transferred college, my SAT scores were high enough that I tested out of having to take a placement test).
I’m really glad I learned calculus extensively but it’s hard to imagine another claim as inaccurate as “calculus is like having a 3rd arm”. It has essentially no “day to day” practicality.
In OPs defense, I’m not sure a third arm would do much other than get in the way and make clothes shopping a nightmare.
The Complete Idiots Guide to Calculus, near where he (she?) is talking about what calculus is good for.
Beyond working out exact solutions, the study of calculus can yield a deep understanding of many physical systems:
I can safely make a left turn through a smaller gap in traffic, or arrive sooner because I stop farther back than most vehicle operators. People who don’t understand calculus seem not to understand how this is possible. They don’t intuitively grasp how speed and acceleration are related to position…they have a zeroth order world model where stopping as far forward as possible is obviously optimal.
When I was an undergrad I took an economics course to satisfy one of my elective requirements. After a few semesters of calculus etc. the concepts and math seemed obvious and trivial, yet most of the class struggled. I usually turned in exams with more than half the allotted time remaining. I conclude that there are lots of people with business degrees who can’t optimize profit or yield or X.
I can work out compound interest calculations without referring to tables or formulas. Only infinite compounding uses ordinary calculus, but difference equations can give an exact solution for discreet payments and incremental compounding.
I am the guy they want on the crown line of a hot air ballon if the breeze is making it want to oscillate. This requires focusing on the velocity of the sway and ignoring the position, which many are unable to grasp…Well that and I bring 250# to the dance.
Not calculus but I have used algebra to work out fuel mixing proportions, which is essentially the same problem as when I had to work out stock splits to partially buy out one partner for my MBA boss.
This of course ignores my engineering work. Plenty of engineers don’t use any calculus. Sometimes I get to make them look bad when I solve problems they have declared impossible. Not always calculus, but almost always going back to basics rather than trying to make a “canned” solution work.
Mostly I use calculus so that I don’t need to memorize or look up lots of formulas. Most of those formulas are just solutions to differential equations applicable to particular circumstance. The differential equations are usually very simple, but the many resulting formulas are fairly complex and hard to remember. The really common situations I have commuted to memory…the atypical ones I can work out in a few minutes.
Is this why most people with a good understanding of calculus seem to have no fashion sense? 
Calc, like Algebra, is easy to dismiss in day-to-day life.
However, the way both teach you to think about things can make a lot of things easier. It’s less about the calculation than how to approach and identify problems and solutions. That can be enormously useful.
Remember, the more math you know…the more math you see!
^^^^ I agree with this. I studied a lot of calculus, and use it at work. But I also see it in everyday life. It becomes sort of a philosophical way to look at the world. Useful? Maybe not, but comforting.
my horse Old Paint needed a saddle. it came in handy.
lots of the functions and operations of calculus help you understand things that happen in the real world. roller coasters, stink spread all kinds of things.
This. I have a job that requires plenty of advanced mathematics, and I almost never use anything beyond high-school algebra outside of work. It’s useful to be able to think logically, but I don’t count that as using calculus or anything else.
I second this. Being able to do proofs of the sort you might learn in a logic class would do as much to clarify one’s thought processes, I expect.
I don’t think I became a clearer thinker from taking calc. The rigors of getting my doctorate did, but (a) that’s not for everybody, especially given the years of one’s life that are involved, and (b) it’s that you’re really learning the stuff you could have learned in that intro-to-logic course if it had only mattered as much as it does to get the proofs right in your doctoral dissertation in math.
And a freshman-level probability and statistics course is much more useful in terms of understanding the world than calculus, geometry, or even algebra.
I think the last time I actually did any calculus was when i taught it 14 years ago. But it, like all mathematics, is a way of thinking and I hope to do that all the time. The mathematics I do is quite far from calculus.
Yep. It’s hard to imagine that anyone claiming otherwise actually knows calculus. I’ve worked in high tech research where the most advance math I ever used was taking an average.
statistically that isn’t true of high tech research.
If you integrate it over time, it is.
But seriously, I certainly couldn’t have obtained my job without knowing calculus, but in a corporate setting (as opposed to an academic one), I think it is more common than not. You can argue about whether that’s actually “research” or not, but our department was R&D.
My day to day living is actually in a career in physics. But I don’t use calculus daily. I used it Friday, but I bet I do not use it most weeks.
I use my understanding of the principles more than I do my skill at solving the kind of homework problems one solves in a calculus course. For example, I often describe problems in terms of differential equations, but I solve them numerically with finite element software. At least a while ago, I think the problem with calculus education is that it focuses almost exclusively on the mechanics of solving problems by manipulating equations, and not on understanding the formulation of equations from real world situations. Software has vastly improved the convenience and reliability of manipulating equations, but few people can interpret real world situations as equations.
Of all the math courses I took, calculus made the least sense to me. I used algebra and trig a lot in my work and just in life in general, and the statistics/probability class I took had a lot of real-life applications. Differential equations was actually an easy class for me after struggling through three semesters of calculus. I guess I just never saw the real life applications of it, or it was explained poorly.