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Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

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While struggling to get through Calculus in college, I often wondered how it might benefit me sometime in the future. I’m still wondering. I’ve found Algebra to be quite useful on several occasions, but (thankfully) Calculus has never come into the picture. Has anyone reaped any benefit from Calculus coursework?

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if

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

you work in the biz intel side you’re likely to use it (areas under curves in forecasting, etc) and alot of other math: statistics functions, etc.

Any engineering related IT would have chance to use it too. I’ve actually found use for trigonometry on the job. we need fn to calculate distance between two points (closest dealer to a customer kind of thing), and least squares doesn’t cut it for distance.

lat/longitudes do NOT form squares, and distance gets much closer at poles.

Filter

In reply to if

Weighing in with my opinion:

In 1997 I was told that the reason for Calculus was simple – it functioned to weed out the non-dedicated, less-desirable programmers.

No, I’ve never used it. But I took it (through Integral) in a month, and passed with a B+.

Sweated blood doing it.

I guess it’s more a measure of what you CAN do.

traffic engineering

In reply to if

If you do traffic engineering you DO need calculus..so…YES!calculus helps.

And this is what is wrong with the American education system

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

Calculus in and of itself has never once been useful to me. The methods of thinking that Calculus taught me have been the difference between being stuck on a problem and being able to complete my task. The usefulness of education is not always directly attached to the knowledge gained. I double majored in liberal arts. The ability to be able to take raw facts and transform them in a logical way into a complete arguement that is bulletproof to attack has been a tremendous help for writing code. The “soft skills” such as comprehensive reading and writing have been better for my career than any amount of IT knowledge.

Take the calculus, trust me. You will look back ten years later, and realise just how often you use it, even if you never take an derivitive or integral ever again after college.

J.Ja

I can’t agree that learning caclulus enhances other learning.

In reply to And this is what is wrong with the American education system

I suffered through both pre-calc and calulus as an undergraduate. Thankfully, I have never had to attempt to use either. I was an accounting major, so we didn’t have “pure” pre-calculus or calculus.

I never felt it was neccessary for the management college. Not once in any of my coursework was there any math beyond algebra. This holds true for when I got my MBA.

I didn’t find that learning the math changed my thinking or my approach to problem solving. I felt it was six credits which could have gone to something more useful.

Just my $0.02.

Then you have not done technical computing.

In reply to I can’t agree that learning caclulus enhances other learning.

The fact that you don’t use calculus on a given day is only that the language of physics is calculus. When you get to do truly technical computing, quite often calculus is the only answer.

Yes, I have even used Tensor calculus. (I had to do some forecasting with spring tension…) I thought I’d never use anything beyond basic algebra. I was wrong…

The point is that you may not realize what you are really going to use. Load up on Math, or you’ll end up in business management…

MBAs often can’t do the Math required of a technician… They usually are Pretty people in management, who by definition aren’t needed to do a job they need to manage people and situations…
From the Navy Moose’s perspective it is not needed, but he couldn’t do quite a few of the jobs I have done in the past.

Sorry you never experienced that “ah ha” moment,

In reply to I can’t agree that learning caclulus enhances other learning.

when you were overcome by the shear beauty of having a phenomenon elegantly described by a simple mathematical expression or equation; i.e. the intimate linkage between something known through the senses and that known by thought.

That’s why I disagree with general education requirements in college.

In reply to I can’t agree that learning caclulus enhances other learning.

I personally have found that learning calculus was enriching, but I asknowledge that my subjective experience does not give me the right to force anybody else to learn it, or to require that college class of anybody who won’t use it in their career. Now, if those people who will never use calculus will also admit that I don’t need to take 10+ classes outside of the science department to be a good scientist, we can all just get along.

Don’t Know What Will Be Needed

In reply to That’s why I disagree with general education requirements in college.

A ggod set of general education requirements should prepare someone for a wide range of possibilities. It should be expected that an individual may only use a small subset of the topics learned, but for the entire population, all of the general learning should come into play.

I would say, however, there are several general education options I would put higher on my list than calculus. I would include: statistics and experiment design, persuasive writing, speech writing and public speaking, marketing and economics, psychology, and logic and philosophy. These are skills that any IT professional will probably use on a consistent basis and are sorely lacking.

I think that Colleges and Universities need to provide a stronger grounding in general requirements. Though I enjoyed calculus, I think that it would tend to fall towards the bottom of my list based on wide-spread use.

So put them higher on YOUR list.

In reply to Don’t Know What Will Be Needed

Get off mine.

Bigger Picture Approach

In reply to Don’t Know What Will Be Needed

If you don’t know calculus how could you possibly know what you’re missing without it? I don’t know calculus and I’m still wondering. But while we all wish we only had to learn that which directly applies to us, this is folly. Let’s take a wider view, and see the whole world all at once. There is a saying “Divide and conquer” and this naturally goes along with “Keep divided to keep conquered.” When the world was ruled by kingdoms, kings were confronted by greater and wiser minds all the time. These wise men were educated in nearly all studies of interest and could often manipulate kings into submissive positions either wittingly or not. (Check out Jafar in Aladdin.) This spawned what we know today as specialization. People began to be corraled into certain subjects, and taught that they only had enough time and talent to learn one skill. This kept the king’s internal enemies weak, because they could not see how to combine two schools of thought into a greater solution. Being versed in many skills greatly enhances your life and can lead to bigger and brighter avenues of success. I’m not only a programmer and graphic designer, but also have skills or education in writing, public speaking, bass guitar and digital recording, modern music history, political science, world religion and their associated entheogens, as well propaganda and memes, and to a lesser degree economics. I don’t need half of that to do my job, but I wouldn’t give up any of it, and all of it enhances my programming/design work. When coming up with a logo for someone, if they are a band and have a certain political or religious affiliation, my knowledge of those things helps me find a unique image that someone without that knowledge would not have considered. That is how calculus works in programming. We have preconceived notions of what we should do, because we have patterns that have worked for us. But not every shoe fits, and having a calculus base can be just what one needs to get out of that pattern box and find the perfect creative solution. If you don’t think something is worth learning, you are just selling yourself short.

wrong skills

In reply to Don’t Know What Will Be Needed

General ed requirements should include only a very small set of classes from a very small set of subjects. Specifically, general ed should ensure that you can gather information, analyze it for yourself, and think for yourself to draw your own conclusions. It should also give a little guidance in learning to see through obfuscation in the way information is made available.

In other words, general ed should do nothing but help you build the mental tools to think and learn for yourself, and teach you to communicate.

That would require reading comprehension, formal logic, technical writing skills, ethical philosophy (because there’s little that teaches one to think for oneself better than ethical philosophy coupled with formal logic), and basic math. Everything else is optional, or part of your major. I particularly find calculus, public speaking, and physical education requirements to be horribly misused subjects in college course requirements. It boggles my mind that these idiots who define curricula require several courses in calculus before they’ll let anyone into a linear algebra course.

Purpose of colleges changed from educating to job training.

In reply to That’s why I disagree with general education requirements in college.

Prior to WW II, relativly few went to college, there were few majors compared to today, and the liberal arts degree was well respected. The goal then was to teach people enough about the various disciplines and their interconnections so that one could then better pursue their own personal interests.

WW II saw first the need for a substantial amount of research, of a nature best accomplished with the expicit & willing co-operation & direct involvement of college staff and their facilities, followed by the need to provide training for the myriad GIs who exercised their educational benefits provided by the GI Bill, so as to secure more gainfull employment than would otherwise have been possible, thus beginning the trend toward colleges engaging in job training.

As a result, we long ago reached the point where the liberal arts major is derided as being a mere dilettante, one who is incapable of getting a “real” degree in anything “worthwhile.”

Compared to most countries, you’re correct

In reply to Purpose of colleges changed from educating to job training.

I work for an international company and you’re correct. The
basic I.T. requirement for our U.S. offices is a bachelor’s
degree. However, in meeting with the director’s of I.T.
departments in our non-US branches, they often ask why we
require a university degree for I.T. rather than someone who
went to a school to specialize in I.T. training.

That might play into our problem re. job losses owing to outsourcing.

In reply to Compared to most countries, you’re correct

If IT personnel abroad can acquire the necessary skills & training in a shorter period of time, and at a significantly lower cost than is the case in the U.S., we are contributing to our own competitive disadvantage.

Then you’re missing ‘it’.

In reply to I can’t agree that learning caclulus enhances other learning.

I’m going to assume here that you were in the Navy too, Navy Moose, and I must say that I’m disappointed. I spent several years of my life after high school learning how to operate reactor plants in the Navy, and I must say that I can’t /not see/ how calculus is useful almost everywhere. They didn’t call the math we learned in Nuclear Power School ‘calculus’, but I realized that was exactly what they were teaching us after going back to college. Everything is about rates of change and it’s relationships to other phenomena. Just because you don’t take a derivative or a Laplace transform on daily basis doesn’t mean that the insights they provide on how the world operates aren’t immensely valuable.

I would agree

In reply to And this is what is wrong with the American education system

But I wonder if it is only because I have used calculus. But not in my IT career. I had a previous career as a nucleaer engineer. I used calculus a few times in that job. But I think I got the most use out of it while helping my son and my wife get through their calculus courses.

It’s a niche area

In reply to And this is what is wrong with the American education system

It’s used quite a bit in probabilities, I’ve also used it in industrial automation. Actually you might have used it without thinking if you’ve done any basic graph functions, the gradient of a line is a derivative after all.

I also agree

In reply to And this is what is wrong with the American education system

I totally agree with this. Technical knowledge is easy to come into; tutorials, articles, reviews, books are available everywhere. Develop the “soft skills”. Don’t look at the calculus course as “I’m never going to need hyperbolic tangent again” but as a thinking course. Follow alone with the deviration of a solution and try to understand the thinking behind the solution, not just memorize the solution.

You can always look up an answer to something in a book or on the web but *learning* how to solve something is much more difficult and that is what you should be thinking about in school: learning to think.

You’ll have all the time in your professional career to pick up a computer language, take the calculus.

I agree as well

In reply to And this is what is wrong with the American education system

Calculus in upon itself may never be used outside your college experience, but when you understand the math behind things in your career, life, etc., it will aid in critical/logical thinking. It has been a while, but I remember working with something someone had incorrectly programmed – I knew mathematically something was amiss by looking at the results, but didn’t go through the whole process to find it. It gives you a depth in the way you look at your job and life (many things in nature have mathematical structures – really cool when you notice it). I even encourage you to go beyond Calculus and into Differential Equations… By the way – I was an economics major.

Calc -> Physics

In reply to And this is what is wrong with the American education system

I use physics way more than pure calculus, however, if you don’t know calc you don’t know physics.

Too true!

In reply to Calc -> Physics

I am grateful to this day that I took Physics and Calculus simultaneously, both at the high school level (the periods were literally back to back, too) and the college level. There was just something amazing about learning about how a second degree differential showed how quickly the velocity of the equation was changing (acceleration) and then immediately afterwards, learning the accleration formula, and seeing that the accleration formula in Physics was the differential of the velocity formula. It helped things “click” for me so much better. Everyone I know who has done this has said the same thing. If Calculus is giving you a hard time, take an equivalent level Physics course at the same time (or vice versa). Physics is just the engineering end of the calculus.

Remember your history… Newton & Liebnitz were actually working on Physics, but they discovered that they needed an entirely new math to explain the Physics, so they thought up Calculus in response. 🙂

J.Ja

In fact, take physics and Calculus

In reply to Too true!

If it can’t be measured and defined mathematically, it is opinion, or theory.

I have worked for NASA and DOD and have worked extensively with Calculus and physics. The real answer is that there is no set understanding of what you will run into in your career. I started out as a flight surgeon. Several years of treating VD and BBR bodies, and I never looked back at medicine. The Calculus and Physics classes I took as a physics major taught me valuable lessons that the skills I have have been developed through knowledge of the Sciences and Math..

“Queen of the Sciences”

In reply to Too true!

Mathematics is not for no reason known by this title.

Without mathematics we’ve no common language with which to describe the physical universe & its underlying principles.

Math is language of Physiscs

In reply to Too true!

I’m a second year student of Physics and I want to be a programmer after I graduate. That’s why I took physics – because it will learn me the ways of thinking. Of how to think of a problem in not just one dimension.
Im doing Calculus on my spare time, and I want to go beyond just the plain Calculus: game theory, set theory, discrete mathematics.

Take the course!

Direct value to IT may be questionable, but it may get you hired

In reply to And this is what is wrong with the American education system

So, let’s say I have a job opening at my company for a senior-level position with specific technical skills. And, let’s say I have 10 resumes for it and all have reasonably similar technical skills, so much that I can’t distinguish between them.

Now, I’m not going to take 15 hours I don’t have to interview all 10 candidates. But, I’ll interview 4 of them in person.

You can bet I’m looking at educational background. Math, science, and engineering degrees trump IS/business degrees. I *want* people who have taken calculus and physics. I *want* people who have been successful at core, difficult subjects. I don’t want people who’ve tried to “predict” the minimum they need to be successful in a job.

And yes, for me, the combination of “unrelated difficult degree + experience + no certs” trumps “trivial or no degree + experience + a ton of certs”. My customers want intelligent people, not collections of targeted certifications.

That’s it, in a nutshell, usually….

In reply to Direct value to IT may be questionable, but it may get you hired

That is the benefit that it has given me. It’s something
difficult that I have done, that they have not.

Unfortunatelym, these days more and more employers do
value the certifications over the basic education. So, you
know what? I have the degree AND the targeted
certifications, too.

Back in the good old days…

In reply to And this is what is wrong with the American education system

Centuries ago when I was in high school we not only took calculus and physics, but also Latin; and we wondered what any of them were good for.

Only much later did I realize that the latter gave me a much better understanding of our language, (Did you ever try thinking without language?) and the former provided discipline in the use of that language. Both have helped me in every job I’ve had since.

Perhaps it’s a lack of this type of training & disciplined thinking that keeps the internet full of stories about deadly spiders under toilet seats, Bill Gates giving away money, and other such nonsense. (Anybody got a tactful way of asking well meaning friends to stop forwarding this nonsense?)

Digression: Is it just me, or is the world suffering from a declining understanding of math in general. “How To Lie With Statistics” should be back in print and required reading in high schools.

“How to Lie with Statistics”

In reply to Back in the good old days…

I agree with your comments about math reasoning. Numerical literacy, particularly statistics, is probably a fundamental skill for participatory democracy these days.
If you’re looking for a replacement for _How to Lie with Statistics_, though, check out Abelson’s _Statistics as Principled Argument_ ISBN: 0805805281. It’s a wonderful non-technical read. Myself, I was always a bit put-off by the “How you can lie with statistics” theme versus the “How you can know with statistics” theme.
For what it’s worth
BTW: _How to Lie with Statistics_ isn’t out of print- Penguin picked it up- 56th edition or something like that. ISBN: 0393310728

Phil

Calculus is hard…and it doesn’t pay well or have a clear future..

In reply to Back in the good old days…

Watching is easy; TV, video games, sports, music video are mostly visual. I like watching.

Thinking is hard; mathematics requires thinking, Algebra requires thinking…Calculus requires mathematics, Algebra, geometery, trigonometry, all those things require thinking. I don’t like thinking.

Job plan: get famous, get rich…hire someone to do my thinking for me. Then complain about why it costs so much…after all they don’t really “do” anythng.

And they wonder why Americans don’t want to waste years of their life in the study of mathematics and science, then earn less than cops, firefighters, teachers, janitors, plumbers…and have to continue studying for a life time to keep their skills fresh.

What we really need are more H-1B visa’s because Johnny can’t calculate.

Johnny CAN calculate…

In reply to Calculus is hard…and it doesn’t pay well or have a clear future..

But there is no glamor in math and science.

I played in a rock band and my groupies wore lipstick,leather and lace.

My day job was IT and my groupies wore horned rim glasses with tape,pocket protectors and thought I was “cool” because I could program in PDP 11 assembler.

Given the choice,which one would you go for?

NOBODY comes knocking at your door in high school
because you had 4 years of higher math,physics and chemistry.
But if you are good at football or basketball,LOOK OUT!

As for H1B,if Billy Gates and Larry Ellison want to lift the ceiling,here’s a thought:

For every H1B visa let in,they set a scholarship fund corresponding to fully pay for the tuition of an AMERICAN citizen to receive a Phd in whatever discipline that an H1B candidate has.

They let in 100,000 H1B’s,they FULLY FUND 100,000 scholarships.

I don’t know about you ,but the poorest years of my life were spent in college.
Try and pay for college on minimum wage.

Johnny can’t friggin’ pay for school!

time to completion of the doctorate

In reply to Johnny CAN calculate…

Interesting proposal. Consider also the increasing number of years it takes to complete the doctorate. Consider this nsf site:
http://nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06312/
for what it’s worth-
Phil

But here are some other options for the American education system

In reply to And this is what is wrong with the American education system

I think this previous post was well-written, and highlights that we are often interested in the general outcomes of education and not necessarily if students can locate China on the map or successfully solve a Hamiltonian system. I teach statistics and use only the multivariate calculus, but find linear algebra and trig comes into use much more frequently.

As for the general benefits of calc, though, I guess we need to remember that calc is only one of the collegiate offerings that could help out. What is unique about calc., for example, that wouldn’t be imparted by classes in rhetoric, anthropology, psychology, or logic?

I guess I’m somewhat reminded of earlier employers and educators in the last century who argued similarly for the benefits of learning Greek and a general classics education. Our “real” stat sequence requires calc III as a prereq, even though the most they do is multivariate integration, presumably because the advanced calc “strengthens your brain.” Is calculus our new Greek, I wonder?

Phil

I’m with you — Calculus isn’t at all necessary.

In reply to But here are some other options for the American education system

Especially for programming, unless you’re actually using calculus in your programming, calculus courses aren’t even slightly necessary to learn the skills that’ll make you good at it. It’s one way of getting them, but there are more efficient ways to get those skills. For instance, symbolic logic and algebra are far better suited to computer programming skills.

Yeah, calc is like the new Greek. I’d like to know Greek, but not enough to actually learn it — and there’s no “strengthening the brain” that I can get from Greek (or calculus) that I can’t get faster and more fully from other sources.

Not calculus, but

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

Spanish was a big fat waste of my time. I abhor anything that requires rote memorization. That’s what computers are for. I should have tried to get foreign language credit for FORTRAN.

Spanish is requirment for living in California

In reply to Not calculus, but

In Southern California, all sorts of streets and cities are Spanish words. I can correctly pronounce anything in Spanish, whether I know what it means or not. If I lived in Louisiana, I would have taken French.

My husband came across two guys arguing in Armenian. He said, “You are in California, so speak the language, Spanish!”

IN AMERICA….SPEAK ENGLISH

In reply to Spanish is requirment for living in California

I hate it when you call a company and it says…For English Press 1, since when did we lose the identity of being ENGLISH speaking Americans? Your husband is a TOOL, in America you speak ENGLISH, if you can’t get out.

New Requirement

In reply to IN AMERICA….SPEAK ENGLISH

So maybe the new requirement we need to weed out the folks who can’t intellectually hack it is to require courses in Mandarin – it would promote logical reasoning, good memory skills, and help us read all those technical materials that sometimes come only in Chinese…… Just a little humor while grading finals….

Let me take a wild guess…

In reply to IN AMERICA….SPEAK ENGLISH

You don’t have much of an aptitude for language, do you?

😀

English, Spanish, Esperanto, whatever

In reply to IN AMERICA….SPEAK ENGLISH

Re: I hate it when you call a company and it says…For English Press 1, since when did we lose the identity of being ENGLISH speaking Americans?

Yawn. This is an issue of commerce/economics/marketing. If there was no SUPPLY of non-English resources, then the non-English speaker would learn to speak English.

Blame the company for groveling and trying to appeal to the non-English speaker, not the speaker.

We’ve had this debate here at TR; and, your side lost.

In reply to IN AMERICA….SPEAK ENGLISH

You obviously know little of the history of the US (the greater part of it was originally comprised of Spanish & French colonies, not English), not to mention the ENGLISH Common Law traditions, which form the basis of much of our present Laws as well as the US Constitution.

And, why are you so obviously xenophobic.

I work in a restaurant …

In reply to IN AMERICA….SPEAK ENGLISH

here in Pittsburgh, and if somebody asks me for a glass of “soda” instead of “pop,” I spit on them and kick them out. When you’re in MY town, you DAMN well better use MY words.

The most important point was ignored.

In reply to Not calculus, but

I think the most important point of your post was ignored, Palmetto:

“[i]I abhor anything that requires rote memorization. That’s what computers are for.[/i]”

Yes! Precisely! I agree with you one hundred percent. That’s why I loathed Trigonometry so much: it’s all rote memorization. The actual learning all happens in the first two or three weeks of a Trig class, including the basic principles from which everything else in the class is derived. The remainder of it is spent memorizing a subset of the hundreds of bits of ephemera derived from fundamental identities that you’ll need to take a given test, after which you forget all that rote memorization garbage to make room for the rote memorization garbage that is important for the next test.

Everything in trig classes can be derived from the identities you’re taught in the first three weeks of any trig class taught by someone competent, but you can’t just derive stuff for all the tests because it takes too long, so you have to basically just cram for each test without actually learning anything new.

Yeah. Did I mention that I abhor rote memorization, too?

calculus rules

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

i wonder about the same things. we have these tools to refine
our thinking more carefully about the problems we have to
solve. if we are not using calculus then our lives are that much
more narrow and defined. if we know something and don’t use it
we become like the donkey trying to climb a hill with a load of
books on its back.

re: Does Calculus Help

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

I have thought about this as well in the past, since the subject painfully kicked my butt way back when. “Why do we have to take this, we’ll never use this stuff in real life”!
After bearing down and actually getting an “A” in advanced Calc,(don’t ask me about any of it now, I threw the book out as soon as I got my final grade and don’t remember how to do a thing) I came to the conclusion that it gives you a good template & foundation on troubleshooting techniques. And the way you go about “troubleshooting” throughout your career. Even though it’s not directly related, I think because I went through the “Calculus Hell”, that it gave me, and trained me, on the way I go about troubleshooting things, even 15+ years later.

Agree with the template concept

In reply to re: Does Calculus Help

Your situation is similar to mine. I have not used it directly but have benefitted from template and foundation it provided for troubleshooting problems. I still practice the basics to keep from getting too rusty and to keep my analytical skills sharp.

calculus is my career

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

Hooking up hardware is amusing, but it’s those pesky algorithms that pay the bills. Multivariate integro-differential equations, Black-Scholes, whatever: finance, engineering, or customer modeling, without calculus you’re just taking orders and pulling cable.
(that’s about as imflammatory as I can get)

yes… who would have thought?

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

I had virtually no math in high school – the nuns didn’t think I’d ever need to do more than balance a checkbook – but I worked long and hard to get though advanced integral calculus and did get a degree in computer science. I worked with calculus at a software company developing code to estimate yields of mortgage-backed securities. I’ve moved on to other software and not too long ago mentioned using calculus to one of the dads at my kids soccer games – he works at a bank and needs to find staff who can handle the math – he says it’s hard to find anyone with calculus skills. Yes, it’s a niche, but a broad one and it’s the sort of thing that a decision support system needs. I’m making my kids take calculus in hig hschool for the discipline it teaches and for the chance that they’ll have an extra advantage in the job market.

I learned Calculus “recursively”

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

Although I was a Computer Science major, math was never my strong point. I took calculus 3 times in college. The first 2 times I dropped the course in the middle, because I saw that I was flunking out big time.

Then I spent a summer taking both Calculus I and Calculus II at a local community college – simultanously. Somehow their computer let me register for both courses (must have been a bug). I learned Calc I in the morning and Calc II in the afternoon. I called it recursive learning – I started to understand Calc II only I had started to progress in Calc I.

Eventually, I realized that I was barely staying afloat in both courses, so I then went to a private tutor in the late afternoons, and while doing homework with him I started to get a grip on things.

Anyway, I passed both courses and my regular college accepted the credits.

I almost got caught – once I was sitting in my Calc I class and my Calc II teacher (who was also the dept head) walked in to speak to the teacher. I slunked down in my seat so he would not see me, otherwise he would realize that I was taking both classes.

Anyway, I have never used Calculus since. And I think I was a pretty good programmer back in the days I did that, and I think I am a good systems admin now. I see a need for Calculus for certain areas of the computer field (like algorithm development or maybe testing) but I have never used it.

Calculus is used in mapping (GIS)

In reply to I learned Calculus “recursively”

I have worked in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and used calculus to display maps. First derivative is slope and second derivative is aspect.

Lots of time I find we are using the univeristy mathematics course that we took, but do not necessarily realize it at the time.

I never saw a use for Linear Algebra and then voila! We were rewiring our clothes dryer and thought we had tried every wire combination possible. But by writing down the permutaions, discovered that there was one combination we had not tried. It was the ‘magic’ combination, and the heat element started working.

The knowledge that you gain in those university science classes is never a waste. Can’t say the same for my ‘arts’ requirements.

Interesting experiences (Math and programming)

In reply to I learned Calculus “recursively”

I’m reading everyone’s experiences with great interest; good topic. When I started taking classes in programming, I somehow assumed that being good in math means beaing good in programming. My programming sort of tanked — total wake-up call for me. I guess particularly in programming, other factors are also important.

No Calculus

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

I am an IT Project Manager, with a BS engineering degree and an MS in Systems Management. I have never found anyone in IT using calculus. Also, I teach part-time for University of Phoenix and they have removed the Calculus course from their BS in IT program because very few students could pass it.

UPhoenix

In reply to No Calculus

Thanks for giving me another reason to blindly filter out resumes with University of Phoenix IT backgrounds.

If they couldn’t pass it…

In reply to No Calculus

… then they had no business as programmers. That being said, you did call this a “BS in IT.” I supposed that if the course was general IT, then calculus would not be needed. That also being said, if someone cannot pass calculus, a college had no business conferring a Bachelor of SCIENCE degree upon them!

The college I went to offered two different degrees in Computer Science: A Bachelor of Arts, and a Bachelor of Science. The difference between the two was that the BS required two semesters of Physics (the BA just needed two semesters of any science, like any BA), as well as two semesters of Calculus for Science Majors (the BA required a lower level calculus), as well as Linear Algebra.

I will not pretend to call Calculus “easy” by any means. But to think that you have earned a Bachelor of SCEINCE without being able to do the math that is the foundation of modern SCIENCE is asanine. That’s like giving someone a black belt in karate because they can beat Mortal Kombat.

There was a period of time, up until relatively recently, where Calculus was a requirement for all bachelor degrees at most colleges. I guess they would rather make students feel good about themselves by giving them a degree then (heaven forbid) asking that the work hard and earn their degree.

For the record, I double majored in liberal arts and have a BA. I sucessfully completed both semesters of Calculus for Science Majors, as well as both of the Physics courses required for CS students. Calculus is not for everyone. But remember, “Computer Science” is indeed a science, and one that is not too far removed from mathematics at that. If you want to have a computer related major that involves little to no math, fine. Call it “IT” or something like that, and make it a BA.

J.Ja

IS/IT vs. CS

In reply to If they couldn’t pass it…

This is where I’m leery about IS/IT programs in general — the level of technical requirement for graduation is *so* much less than CS (and yes, while I could be described as being biased here, I believe I’m supported by the facts).

Given an IS/IT graduate and a CS graduate, I’ll take the CS graduate, even for so-called “administrator” positions. Look, with all of the outsourcing going on these days, the jobs that remain will be higher-level positions and I want someone who can solve real problems. I want a proven track record of problem-solving ability. Calculus and physics and “real” technical writing classes in the curriculum help demonstrate that.

Clarification on “If they couldn’t pass it.”

In reply to If they couldn’t pass it…

Can you clarify this a little.—>
“… then they had no business as programmers. That being said, you did call this a “BS in IT.” I supposed that if the course was general IT, then calculus would not be needed. That also being said, if someone cannot pass calculus, a college had no business conferring a Bachelor of SCIENCE degree upon them!”

I’m “currently”? in a B.S. of COmputer Science program. I say “currently” in quotes because I’m not enrolled at the university at this time, because of my problems with Calculus. In general, I’ve had problems with math since my freshman year. But I made some great strides and I made it through college algebra & pre-calculus. When I took calculus I, that’s when I problems. To date, I’ve taken calculus I three times; 1st time i flunked badly with an F; 2nd time, I dropped mid-semester; 3rd time, got a D+ and 4th time got a D+. After that, I started to take a real look at what was happening with my understanding of math, especially if past pre-calculus. The process of reflection found the answer; math anxiety. It basically has nothing to do with my understanding of math or calculus specifically, but I actually process the performing of calculus in my mind; aren’t performance anxiety problems interesting? So hopefully, I’ll be a changed mathematical being when I go abck to the university *laughing*.

With all of that, why am I even majoring in Computer Science? Because inspite of my issues with maht, the Computer Science/ Comp. Tech professors/instructors I’ve had see that on the science side, I have the potential to do good things and to be very successful in the field. I’ve seem to take a liking to programming. It has worried my alot over the years and I’ve talked to many of my professors about my issues with calculus and my better grades in my computer science classes. From what they’ve told me, it seems to be a “norm” that in general persons who go into Computer Science (the 4 yr degree major) aren’t the A+ geniuses in math.

The university I attended, six courses of calculus is requried for Computer Science, plus two semesters of Physics. Inspite of my issues with calculus, I have enjoyed learning it.

Computer science vs. “IT”

In reply to Clarification on “If they couldn’t pass it.”

“Can you clarify this a little.—>
“… then they had no business as programmers. That being said, you did call this a “BS in IT.” I supposed that if the course was general IT, then calculus would not be needed. That also being said, if someone cannot pass calculus, a college had no business conferring a Bachelor of SCIENCE degree upon them!””

Not a problem to clarify.

Computer Science is an offshoot of mathematics. It requires a particular way of thinking, which is the mathematics realm. If you truly understand calculus, but just have a hard time with the tests, that’s OK; work on your testing problems and keep learning!

But if you simply cannot understand calculus, if that kind of thinking is just outside of your abilities, then I suggest you reconsider your choice of majors. You may get a degree in CS (depending upon the school), and you may end up being good as a functional programmer (being able to string together libraries into a cohesive piece of software), but you will have a very hard time with things like AI, kernels, etc. More importantly, the way of thinking that calculus and the more advanced maths teach you are indispensible to writing clean code, troubleshooting, etc. What a math will instill in you is the ability to intuitively know where the missing piece is, not by the evidence of its existence, but the lack of evidence. It is hard to explain, but it is sort of like how they figured out where black holes were.

I am writing a three part blog series this week on just this. Keep an eye out for it (the first part will go up tomorrow), I think that you will like it if you are just getting into programming. It is all about how to think like a programmer and what you can do to exercise that part of your brain, and then a bit on the way we consider architechture.

J.Ja

Thanks for the clarification…

In reply to Computer science vs. “IT”

I was thinking that’s what you were meaning, but I wasn’t sure and I didn’t want to assume. From almost all of the calculus professors I’ve had, consistantly they’ve said that calculus is the esasy part. The final part of solving a calculus problem is the algebra. And I’ve found this to be true.

Working in computer science does require the same mindset thinking that mathmatics does. And I’ve seen that with my classes in all of the computer sciences I’ve had. Not everyone was able to think logically. I applied for a job this past week working as an mainframe programmer. What I didn’t know that the posisition is entry-level and that you’re trained for 6 months before you enter the position. The main part is that before you get to the training, you have to take a 2 hour test to be able to get into the program (which I’ll be taking on the 19th). And what are they testing for? To “see if a person can think logically and mathematically–like a programmer”…literally.

“What a math will instill in you is the ability to intuitively know where the missing piece is, not by the evidence of its existence, but the lack of evidence.” It is so cool to be able to have tha ability. It’s help me so much in not only my own programming work, but when friends of mine have asked me to debug their programs or classmates with their’s or just basic troubleshooting period, since my current area is tech support.

Unfortunately, what it often does…..

In reply to Thanks for the clarification…

What often happens is that, for those who just scrape by, it
creates an extreme dislike for the subject and doesn’t
promote it, in any way. I’ve seen students who, upon leaving
their classes, have told their professor what they can do with
their *&%*ing calculus.

Couldn’t? Maybe . . .

In reply to If they couldn’t pass it…

Maybe people shouldn’t be granted BS degrees if they literally couldn’t pass a calculus course, but that doesn’t mean they should be forced to take calculus. Computer science doesn’t necessarily require any calculus at all, as a field, and the underlying thinking skills that tend to be conferred by calculus can also be gained from other, more relevant, subjects. Now, electrical engineering — that one definitely needs calculus.

BS vs BA

In reply to If they couldn’t pass it…

My college similarly offered a B.S. vs. B.A. in Comp. Sci.
and the difference between the two was that a B.S.
required two semesters of chemistry, two semesters of
physics, and Calc I, II, and III, plus one other math course
of your choice. The B.A. required two semesters of
general science, and one math course, with the other five
semesters being in any other subject as long as you took
at least two semesters in a subject to get any credit
towards meeting your core requirement.

I do know that if I had gone for the B.A. route, my GPA
would have been higher, but I think that my B.S. had a
little more value.

UoP and calculus

In reply to No Calculus

UoP, I believe has only five weeks for the undergraduate courses. That is far too short a time for a math course.

My calculus course as an undergrad lasted fifteen or so weeks (normal semester).

In my course, I had the time to get help from tutors and from the instructor to keep my grades from falling.

In five or six weeks, it is harder to do that. Especially where UoP isn’t a traditional school.

“While struggling to get through Calculus in college…”

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

Have you ever since faced an equal or nearly equal struggle? If so, did the memory of your success at the challenge of Calculus give you confidence in your ability to meet the next challenge successfully? If not, Calculus has still not only enhanced, but [b]created[/b] your IT career via all of physics up to and including quantum mechanics, which is the basis of the semiconductor. Although other branches of math were involved, they could not have been used to understand the physical world as physicists do now without Calculus.

I have to admit…

In reply to “While struggling to get through Calculus in college…”

so far, no class has compared to taking calculus, at least for all of the classes I’ve ahd in college. I do agree that the positive effects of Calculus do filter to other areas.

Calculus and work

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

NO, it hasnt helped or ‘advanced me’ a lick. Just like my course in Boundary Value problems at PSU. Gave a professor a job! Or how about ‘Art History 101’??? I always have that to fall back on, like my accordian lessons.

No and Yes

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

I can’t recall ever using calculus on the job for anything. On the other hand, the problems being posed to me have been too basic to require it. Which I suppose could be a commentary on the depth of thinking of senior managers.

I do occasionally use calculus when doing hobby work as I like to tinker with things and ideas; as well as dork with stuff. Not terribly useful for the most part unless I decide to write a book. However, it does keep the mind sharp.

You know what you call a person who has been taught only what they need to know to do a job? A technician. They don’t know WHY they are doing things the way they are, and they don’t have the tools necessary to go beyond their training.

Information is a tool. Calculus is both a type of information, and a tool for gaining more information. i.e. it’s a tool twice-over. Are you operating with a half-empty toolbox? There is no such thing as useless information. If you live long enough, and experience enough, you’ll eventually have a need for that information. You ‘might’ be able to get by with a less than optimum tool when you need it, but you’ll waste more time, more energy, more resources, at greater risk than you would if you had the right tool.

A good programmer needs to understand what real world process he or she is describing mathematically in a program. Any time you do a recursive loop you’re applying calculus techniques. Or areas under curves. How about a program to describe the rate of change in the concentration of a medication in the bloodstream based on 6 variables? You need to know calculus to understand if you’re doing it right. And you need to know calculus to make the right changes to old code to meet new criteria.

Interestingly enough, there are (or were) several well-known science fiction writers who proposed that you weren’t a fully functioning human being unless you were capable of doing calculus.

Do you want to be an IT generalist or an IT specialist?

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

Calculus is not only used to solve real-world problems, it is also about learning how to approach problems. Calculus I is the basics. It is not easy for everyone but for those who pass it provides understanding into many of the mathematic functions availabile on calculators and in Excel. True, anyone can take a class in Excel or read a calculator’s manual, but with calculus you learn how and why the function works and even the limitations.
If you find calculus hard today and don’t need to take engineering or physics soon then take a break from it. Focus on your other studies, then take it again. Sometime a little more “educational” maturity (learning how to study, time management, etc.) is all that is needed to grasp this subject. However, if you need it as an prerequisite then seek help to get you through it.
As for the question “is it used in IT?” Anytime you try to understand or model something that is non-linear such as changes in memory usage or network bandwidth with the addition of new applications then you’ll be using calculus, whether you realize it or not.
Good luck.

Haven’t taken it yet, but see the point…

In reply to Do you want to be an IT generalist or an IT specialist?

I have yet to take my Calc class (MIS major, so only one course required) but I see the advantage of it: It builds problem-solving skills that you need in order to program.. break down things to basic components and all of that. Unfortunatly for me, math is my only weakness.. I barely can understand Algebra (failed my college algebra class this term 🙁 so I have to retake it), so it might be a while before I can take Calc..

Honestly that’s the reason i won’t go for a Comp Sci/Engineering degree; it’d be suicide to take the three required calc classes AND the multitude of physics required for it. I just can’t comprehend the stuff, although I can write decent software just fine. Go figure!

I know how you feel…

In reply to Haven’t taken it yet, but see the point…

“Honestly that’s the reason i won’t go for a Comp Sci/Engineering degree; it’d be suicide to take the three required calc classes AND the multitude of physics required for it. I just can’t comprehend the stuff, although I can write decent software just fine. Go figure!”

I know exactly how you feel. I started having problems in Calc I. I failed it once, but the other two times, I passed…but not with the required C grade. But I’ve been working on Calculus with a tutor and a psychologist, so I feel alot more confident.

I’m like you, I’m a pretty decent programmer. But I see that my programming can be much better with the kind of mindset that calculus gives you. I’ve been programming professionally (on my job) for 2 years now and the thought processing with programming is so much the same as calculus.

Linear- and Matrix Algebra also useful

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

Fifteen years ago I took Calc I and II, and now wish I had taken the linear and matrix algebra electives as well.

I recently had to solve a material optimization problem, and the best solution involved the use of linear programming. Linear programming, aka “management science,” has many other practical business applications as well (product mix, shipping, portfolio optimization, etc.). I got a watered-down introduction to management science in an MBA course, but suspect the advanced algebra courses would have covered it in greater depth.

Calc, trig, algebra; I’ve used them all more than occasionally in both “technicnal” and IT environments.

Any student who thinks they might be interested in graphics or game programming should take all the math they can get.

IT specifically? No. But…

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

… in my previous career as an electronics engineeering technician, yes. The “heavy math” was normally done up-front by the engineer under whom I worked. One day he handed me six pages of his tiny handwritten calc and asked me to find where he had taken a wrong turn, as the answer made no sense. After half a day of laborious analysis, I found where he had dropped a term in an integral expansion. He was duly impressed .

In a larger sense, the value of calculus lay not in the few instances where I needed to actually set up or solve equations, but in a deeper intuitive comprehension of the physical behavior of electronic components.

So even though this example is somewhat removed from IT (as distinguished from computer science as other contributors have pointed out), I would still say that it’s worth the effort.

It has helped

In reply to IT specifically? No. But…

I am not going to say that I have used Eigen Values in post college work, but have been confronted many times where knowledge of techniques learned in advanced math either made the problem easier to understand or solve. I have a love hate relationship with the 6 quarters of calculus I took, but I don’t regret it now.

Nope.

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

Neither did the Physics, Chemistry, English and other subjects that we were taught in my school and college.

edited: grammar.

Tastes Bad

In reply to Nope.

If it tastes bad, it must good for you. Actually I enjoyed calculus. I have never gotten any use out of it, but it was a good mental exercise.

Don’t agree

In reply to Tastes Bad

I got three calculus semesters. I never used more than my High school calculus in 22 years of not so bad career.
But the point here is about mental exercise. I think there are more positive or useful ways of making a mental exercise. I see more positive the algebra of discrete sets, and its application to logic, as an exercise and as a tool, than infinitessimal calculus.
My two pennies.

Impress your friends.

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

That’s the main thing I got from calculus. I can tell my friends that I took two semester of calculus. I can tell them how difficult the four hour open book final for the second semester was.

I never did quite get calculus until I recently saw a book titled “Calculus for Dummies” in Barnes and Noble. Now why didn’t they have the Dummies books when I was in school.

There’s another book called…

In reply to Impress your friends.

Calculus Demystified. It’s recommended by one of my former calculus professors. He recommended that I get it for when I retake calculus at the university. I haven’t read through it yet, but skimming through it, it’s a good book

Absolutely Not

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

I had to take the stupid subject in college from a professor that showed up on the first day of class, and the last day of class. All other classes in between, he had assingments written on the board. Do you know how hard it is to learn calculus that way? I still don’t know what use it is since every answer I even got was Zero, negative infinity, or positive infinity. I love books, but when I passed that class by only 1 point, I had a ceremonial book burning.

Terrible Professors

In reply to Absolutely Not

Your professor must have been tenured. I’m kinda surprised he didn’t have a TA or something “teaching” the class.

Sometimes, the TA’s even speak almost understandable English.

My advanced finance “professor” for my MBA had terrible spoken English. We were never sure what he was saying. The book dated to the mid 1980s and was just about useless for learning the material.

My classmates and I did well on the papers, he was an easy grader. I learned almost nothing in the class. The biggest thing I wanted to learn was how to perform the calculations in Excel and we never even got that much from the course.

The book burning you did, must have been satisfying. 🙂

Not really

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

Most of the math I’ve used in my software development career is algebra, but I think algebra is the most advanced math I’ve figured out how to apply to problems. I’ve seen other people be able to apply Calculus and linear algebra to real life problems. They just know when to use it, but that skill has eluded me.

I recently worked on a software project where I tried to apply Calculus to an engineering physics problem, and did not succeed. It’s the first time I’ve ever tried to use it in my work. I’m sure I’m just rusty.

My advisor in college said they forced CS students to take 2 semesters of Calculus, if for no other reason, to enhance our logic skills. Maybe it did. I don’t know. If it enhanced my logic skills, I didn’t notice the effect. I managed to do okay in Calculus. I still have my textbook from the course for no other reason than I figured I might need to use some of the formulas in it someday. I was particularly fascinated with McClauren Series (forgive me if I misspelled), for a geeky reason. I had long wondered how calculators could figure out logs and roots and McClauren Series seemed to provide an answer, though I’ve never confirmed it with anyone.

My favorite math course was geometry in high school. It wasn’t because of the “pretty” shapes or anything. Geometry teaches one how to write proofs, and it fit well with the way I think. It fits well with a certain level of programming as well: step-by-step logic. It has a kind of boolean nature to it, too. Either something is true, or it’s not (or it’s an unprovable postulate).

Algebra is about symbol manipulation, as is Calculus to a certain extent. I don’t think I realized that until years later. Nobody ever explained it to me that way. I kind of knew it from the way it was explained, but I always expected to fill in “x” or “y” with scalar values. I thought the purpose of algebra was to calculate a concrete result. I carried that expectation over to Calculus, which just made it confusing. It’s only been with my work in computers that I’ve come to realize that’s not really the point at all. It can be used for that, but the real work is symbol manipulation. Variables can represent other functions, not just values.

So in a way my CS/programming experience has enhanced my understanding of math. Not the other way around.

Thanks for the overwhelming response.

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

It looks as though this thread has run its course. Although I’m better able to understand the strong, important relationship between Calculus and the computer sciences, I’m still not totally convinced that it played a key role in my own education and life experiences.

An outstanding Algebra professor really opened my eyes to the importance of math in general, but I’ve had trouble connecting with calculus. If only that terrific professor taught calculus…..

not really

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

I have never had to use advanced mathematics or advanced electronic theory in any of my jobs.

The most technical I had to get was when I used some math and radio theory in writing a calibration routine for a transmission unit.

But, never anything above some algebra and trig.

yes

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

I always spend my free time converting radians to degrees just for fun.

All math is useful

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

If you’ve ever had to use functions in excel or support an engineering group, calculus with the critical thinking and problem solving skills it subtly develops is extremely useful.

or . . .

In reply to All math is useful

. . . you could just develop those skills directly via a class in symbolic logic.

Only in the fact that I can show that I completed it…….

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

Despite being forced to take Calc 1, II, and III, it is not
somehting that I use, and I did well in it, so I know that I
don’t use it.

The main advantage it has given me is that it is something
that I have done, but that some others have not. I.T.
employers don’t ask job applicants if they know Calculus.
They ask, whether they can administer an Oracle DB
server, or if they know how to prigram a Cisco router, or
have they had any experience using (fill in the
manufactuer’s brand of product).

Unfortunately, people don’t go to college (at least not in
the US) simply for the purpose of gaining knowledge.
They do it because they know that if they don’t, they’re
going to be financially troubled for the rest of their lives.

calculas

In reply to Has calculus enhanced your IT career?

Calculas will serve nothing but it will improve your thinking skills. It will never gurantee any kind of career perhaps you are sure to be on the streets if you just believe in calculas alone.
There are people who are good at sciences but not so good at maths . Science is intutive.and math may or may not improve your programming ability. In a nutshell people have different skills
each profession requires different types of thinking skills. it’s not like the calculas way of thinking will help you to solve problems for any profession or programming.
sometimes the calculas way of thinking could be barrier to solve programming problems.

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