[CS-FSLUG] Calculus

[David Aikema]

On 5/24/06, Yama Ploskonka <Yama at veritasacademy.net> wrote:
> David Aikema wrote:
> > On 5/24/06, Yama Ploskonka <Yama at veritasacademy.net> wrote:
> >> If science is finding out data about data, and data is U, i.e. Creation
> >> and Man's delving and musings on it, then the use and the parts that
> >> require Calculus is so minuscule as to be less than a rounding error.
> >
> > I beg to differ.
> >
> You may.  I'd like to know why you do, though.

There are a lot of people out there who don't really need to know
calculus, but on the other hand there are a fair number of situations
in which this can come in handy.  Does everyone need to know it?  No.
Do a majority of people need to know it?  Perhaps not.  Is it "so
minuscule as to be less than a rounding error"?  I would say no.

> I'd looooove to see those numbers, and see the Microsoft ivory tower
> confounded.  Even if it were 99.7 instead of 99.9, it would prove the

What does Microsoft have to do with this?

(you might want to eliminate people with PhDs in English and the like
- if you were to survey PhDs about their thoughts on calculus - as
they likely wouldn't have dealt with it in the first place. Also, how
would you define a "successful" PhD?)

> Bless you, I appreciate this conversation.  As a teacher I have to make
> sure my kids _do_ learn their calculus, even though I might not care for
> it myself.  Being the one who teaches Latin makes it even worse, since I
> put that in the same bag as Calculus, almost, but in our UMS school,
> it's vital.

So, if you find both Calculus and Latin almost irrevelant, how did you
end up teaching them?

> BTW. that example of real-life calculus, do you have it?  Sorry to bug
> you, but it would make my heart to be more at peace to know it is not
> 100% not used.  I am somewhat afraid of total certainities, especially

Well, you mentioned that you thought someone developing an airbag
might use it, so it sounds like you don't think that it's completely
worthless.

The job that I referred to was from a year or two ago so I can't
recall with crystal clarity everthing that was done or what might be
under NDA (I'm currently back in school working on a graduate degree).
 At that point in time I was checking how audio streams would sound
with various compression technologies in place - and how to measure
how quickly a protocol might switch between two modes (the quality of
the stream being affected by this change).

Dave