Calculus....I just don't get it.

If i have learned any higher math by the time I reached 43, I'll never fucking learn it.

and decided if I haven't learned it by now, I probably don't need it.

a third of my calculus students dropped the class by the end of the first semester. some of these were doing very well too. but still, its real hard work for most people to learn calculus

It is the mathematics of motion. Once you understand that, it becomes a lot easier... until the psycho high priest of math, which to him is the one true religion, professor expects you to prove the theorems that no one came up with until the genius Isacc Newton and gives you 5 hours of calculus problems, none of which are the easy problems, and expects you to do them in three hours for the final exam. I was happy to get a C in that class. The professor took pride in the number of people who he failed.

but young brains are math brains, older brains arent.


I was a wiz at it in college and loved it, but ask me to do anything related now and its all greek to me :-)

...but I suck on exams.
I don't even understand the concept of multi-variable calc- what's up with that?

the class is a real pisser, but my professor is a raging liberal. You should have seen him on Black Wednesday!

I hated calculus -- busted my ass just to get through it.

Houston G. Wood, III

Name ring a bell? Two years ago, he told anyone who would listen that aluminum tubes in Iraq were not designed for use in a gas centrifuge. In return, he was smeared by the * administration.

Cooperative Research

When I took the course, I had no idea of his background. My respect for him is off the scale.

I had religious experiences in Calculus!

Seriously. I did.

Calculus and quantum mechanics. Rife with religious experiences and epiphanies.

I don't know how people go through life not knowing Calculus. I mean, go through life and still feel fulfilled - they're missing out on so much about the universe, and the environment around them. Knowing what I know now, if I were to lose that knowledge, and knew that I no longer knew it, I'd be destitute.

Math is the opening up of the universe.

Or are you a disciple of the professor that I had for calculus. Mathematics was a religion for him. It was scary.

It's geeky, I know, but that's okay - I'm a geek. :-)

But yes, some definite religious moments. Mathematics is the path to the mind of God.

and tell it to my kid. She's 10 years old and in Algebra. She can do it, for sure, but she is sometimes a bit down on math.

I had a religious experience in a zoo once. I was staring at a little tree frog in his tank. He was staring back at me with those big eyes, unblinking. We stared a long time.

Suddenly, it flashed across my mind that he was a Buddha.

I have no idea why I thought that. But in that instant, it made complete and total sense. I felt so at peace looking into that tree frog's eyes.

Math just made me want to rip my face off.

"He was a Buddha". Exactly right!

What an incredible moment that must have been.

To have one's mind opened up that way - beautiful!

And your last line made me LOL! Just remember, though, that your face is also the Buddha, so don't rip it off. :-)

I barely made it through algebra. To much work to learn nothing.

Loved it and algebra, also. Not so crazy about geometry and trig.

Algebra and calculus are like playing a game! Very challenging and rewarding.

Reward. I dont consider know which train got to the station quicker. Practically useless as far as I can tell.

like it's a game. I feel like I'm solving puzzles, and it's fun for me.

It's like some freaking cosmic holy grail to him.

Personally, I never really got it. Maybe because my college Calculus professor was more interested in hitting on me than teaching the subject, and the TA couldn't speak English. Literally.

I told that it seemed to me to be a bad sine.

THE DEVIL. Ya hear?

Placebo + Math = :nuke:

I can do the practical problems that apply to real life, but once it crosses into the theoretical realm, I can't do it. I'm awful at math.

could not have said it better.

Read Tour of the Calculus by David Berlinski. Excellent read on a dry subject.

calculus is just the beginning of higher math ! which is FUN ! FUN!! FUN !!

taking hilbert spaces right now and enjoying every moment of it .

cannot imagine life without calculus. Sadly, many people dislike math and don't know there is such a beautiful world out there. The last math course that I took was on Complex variables and I loved every minute of it. Your user name reminded me of Parseval's theorem (in Fourier series)

Now I am faced with helping a math challenged kid. Luckily, the next two years are algebra (my best subject) and geometry. I guess I have 2 years to relearn calculus :(.

Differentiation especially... I never did like finding the area of weird shapes.

Diff. Eq however is *da bomb*. Suddenly all types of problems can be solved, self reliant equations, etc.

Also, discrete & comb. algebra was ok but not that great, statistics should be required for everyone, and linear programming (algebra) was some of the coolest math problems around.

I'm a geek, always have been and always will be :)

I think a lot of stupidity would be eliminated if people actually knew how statistics were generated, what they mean, and how to "fool" them, and how graphics and things - such as USA Today seems to like to pull (or at least used to) - can be used to obfuscate the truth.

And we need to figure out a way to get people to learn the difference between a percentage increase and an absolute increase. (Such as the statement "The number of high school students who drop out of school is at an all-time high!" - well, in absolute numbers? probably - the number of students is at an all-time high. But how is it on a percentage basis? The drop out rate might actually be lower than previous years, even though the number is higher)

Argh.

Math stupidity is a real bane on the existance of a society.