1.) At MIT, everyone has to take at least a semester of calculus, even if you end up majoring in “humanities”. They even have an assembly-line-style process that’s open all semester long where you can take a series of six tests. Pass the tests and you pass th course. You can take them all on the first day, or the last day, or space them out through the semester. You can even take them before the first day of class. That’s what I did (I took calc in high school, using the same text book.)
2.) I do think that too many people get forced to take calculus who don’t need it. Case in point, my wife, Pepper Mill, who had to take it for a business curriculum. Why, I don’t know. But she is one of those math-inhibited people who has trouble with algebra, let alone calculus. She went to the instructor, who gave her a test, recognized her difficulties, and told her he’d give her a “D” (s passing grade) if she promised to never take the course again. She instantly agreed, and hasn’t had any problems or regrets since.
#.) even among people you would think would use calculus, several years after college they end up not using it. I still occasionally use it in my work (optical engineering), but one of our friends, who is in sa technical field (chemistry) confessed to me that she hadn’t had to use it in years. I was flabbergasted – my college chemistry involved a lot of calculus. But maybe that’s because they were teaching new concepts.
I’d wager to say that most people who have taken a calculus course do not use it in their job or profession.
I’m an engineer, so I got the full treatment (four semesters of it). I am glad I took the classes, but it’s been at least five years since I’ve used it.
A lot of forms have a block for printing your name and a block for signing your name. If you don’t know cursive, do you print your name in both blocks?
For some bizarre reason, the entire ‘pure mathematics’ A level I did was based around calculus. I also had a teacher who literally started the first class by telling everyone that most of us would never need to use it, and if we ever did we’d need to learn it to a higher level, He could explain why it was so relevant but it would be a waste of time. It’s what the syllabus says we need to learn, so just memorise it [1].
Anyway, I failed A level pure maths. I hadn’t actually wanted to take the class, but until that point I’d been getting really good grades, so I was pushed into it. Two years of being bored out my skull without even knowing what the point was.
That guy was so amazingly boring. No enthusiasm for anything, ever. He dressed in a plain grey suit including a grey tie every day, even when bumped into out of school. His wife, unexpectedly, was a rainbow-clad hippy lady. Theory among the students was that they’d both started off normal, but she had gradually drained him of all colour over the marriage… ↩︎
My college age daughter who has never learned cursive, has a signature that has the letters connected. She was required to create one for some purpose when she was a tween or early teen. It has changed a lot over time. Her recent passport application signature looks very different from the one she had when she was 12.
But I bet she hasn’t signed in ink more than twice since turning 18. It’s just not that common any more. She’s signed numerous contracts and applications but they are almost all digital signatures.
Heck if someone were to compare my signature on a check I recently wrote to the signature card from 1995, I’m sure it will be very very different.
Net, net. A signature is not as important as you think it to be.
A lot of signatures are illegible as text, and I expect that’s true regardless of whether the signer knows or uses cursive. But I suppose that someone might have a signature that’s legible, and which matches the printed name. So for that specific person, the form didn’t actually need two separate lines, but for most people, it does, and it’s in the nature of forms that they’re not customized for an individual’s needs, so that person still needs to fill out both lines.
An excellent point, and well exemplified by the famous book “How to Lie with Statistics”, by Daniel Huff and first published in 1954, and actually used as a college textbook in some statistics courses. Without this kind of basic grounding, those uneducated in statistics are likely to think of it as a very science-y subject, and therefore very accurate, while the reality is that it’s often anything but.
I agree, and even if long division is basically an obsolete skill, I think it’s helpful in teaching the basic principles of arithmetic, just like calculus is useful foundational knowledge even if you never use it. And I remember multiplication tables being drilled into our young heads – also now more or less obsolete, yet still handy for quick estimates when you don’t immediately have a calculator on hand. In fact I don’t even have a standalone calculator – it’s always my computer, tablet, or phone.
I was a business major as an undergrad, and had to take two semesters of calculus for my bachelor’s degree. AIUI, calculus is an important part of financial models, and that’s the reason why it’s required for a lot of business degrees.
However, my school offered two classes in “business calculus,” which were focused purely on application, and didn’t get into the “how to understand how a derivative equation works,” which regular calculus classes (for people going into the sciences, mathematics, and engineering) would teach.
They are useful at the hotel I work at. We hand them out to guests who want to talk to a specific manager or salesperson. Especially at 2 AM. Why people think we have a wedding salesperson on the clock then I have no idea. Or the hotel manager.
Community college level, not high school: I’ve taught “Calc for Business and Life/Social Sciences” a few times. It’s like Calc 1 & 2 Lite, in a single course. It doesn’t get as heavy into the concepts, it features no trigonometry (thus the only prereq is College Algebra), and focuses more on applied problems rather than mechanics.
Not math, but UC Berkeley has a physics course - I’ve forgotten the course number - that is commonly called “Physics for Future Presidents”. It’s designed to provide the barest familiarity with physics to non-STEM majors that still satisfies graduation requirements. IIRC, that nickname is used by nearly all the physics professors, even the Nobel Laureates.
That’s a lot more flattering than the usual name of “…for jocks”.
When I was an astronomy major at Villanova, one of the students’ duties was manning the observatory, which was open to the public. One night, we got an entire class of third-graders come up, which was fun. They were doing astronomy in their science period that week. At the end of the week, the teacher sent us copies of their quizzes.
Someone posted them in the hallway together with the quizzes from Astronomy for Jocks. Not only were the third-graders’ quizzes harder, but they did better on them.