Goal #43) Take a Calculus Class
June 15, 2011 6 Comments
When I wrote about taking a Calculus class last month, I speculated that I didn’t expect it to be worthwhile. There are just some things in life that translate better than others into practical application. Now that I’ve taken the class, I stand by my statement. I don’t feel that what I’ve learned will translate into “real life.”
And after a month of being in class for three hours a day, five days a week, I’m still not sure what Calculus is all about.
Sure, I can find derivatives, and calculate the area between two functions…but what’s the point? Seriously!? I just don’t understand how this knowledge makes a bit of difference outside of doing Calculus? Learning Calculus for the sake of doing Calculus seems senseless. Maybe I just haven’t gone far enough to see a practical purpose.
Here’s an example of a problem that uses a “real life” example:
If a snowball melts so that its surface area decreases at a rate of one square centimeter per minute, find the rate at which the diameter decreases when the diameter is ten centimeters.
Yeah, I can figure the problem out, but why? What’s the point? Does anyone actually care how fast the diameter is decreasing when it’s precisely ten centimeters wide? And honestly, by next week I’ll probably have forgotten how to solve it…actually, I might have forgotten already. Shit! I’ve got a final tomorrow! Luckily I’ve been doing pretty well on all the quizzes and exams so I can afford to make some mistakes.
I’m hoping to finish up with at least a B, and as someone who’s always felt like my background in mathematics was weak, I think I’ve done pretty well.
About Steven
Calculus doesn’t deserve its reputation as useless. I admit, there’s really no point in doing calculations when it comes to everyday experience. But a qualitative understanding of calculus is actually really useful. Derivatives are just a measure of *how* something is changing. The obvious example is acceleration. Say a car is accelerating from 0 to 60 in 20 seconds. Is it doing that by gaining 3 mph every second? Or is the driver flooring it in the beginning and then chilling at 60 for a while? If the driver is flooring it, what is the torque curve of the car? When does it switch gears? A hybrid won’t accelerate as quickly as a sports car. An automatic won’t accelerate as quickly as a manual.
Say you leave your phone somewhere for 6 hours. When you come back, it has 6 missed calls from the same person. The first question you ask is, “When did they call?” Your second question might be, “How long did they wait between attempts?” If they called every hour on the hour, then they clearly really want to talk to you, but it’s probably not urgent. If they called 6 times within 5 minutes it’s probably really important. So if you plot “cumulative number of calls received” against time, fit it with a curve, and take the derivative, you get urgency. Or you just do it qualitatively in your head, which is what people actually do. That doesn’t stop it from being calculus.
Calculus is actually central to my world view. I do everything with it. Not with numbers, not consciously, but whenever something changes, I ask how it changes, and that is calculus.
Thanks for the comment…qualitatively, unconsciously…yes, maybe “Calculus” as you call it, is useful. But I still can’t say that I see real practical application for finding the derviative of an equation of a line, or the area between two lines, or the volume of the equation about the y-axis…
I don’t mean to say that I haven’t enjoyed the class in some way. I have. I’ve learned quite a bit, but mostly I feel it won’t be relevent to my life outside of the classroom.
The main use of calculus is as a basic tool in a lot of quantitative professional fields and scientific research. In economics we use it all the time to calculate the effect of one variable on another. For example in my current research we use integrals to calculate the total cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions given information on the cost of reducing one tonne of greenhouse gases. If you aren’t going into one of these fields like engineering, economics, or any physical science it probably won’t be a lot of use. I don’t think I ever use it in everyday life, whereas I do use basic algebra etc in that context.
@David: I am going into the physical sciences as my degree is in Environmental Science. Maybe once I begin working it’ll make more sense. Right now though, it’s this abstract, nebulous knowledge that I don’t know how to apply to my current life. Down the road, maybe it will come in handy…let’s just hope when that day comes it’s not a faded memory! Thanks for dropping by!
Wow, Mimi really puts it into world view, but really, I’m with you Steven! I didn’t take calculus until grad school. It wasn’t add a graduate level, but rather a Calc 101 that I need as a pre-req to my program. I really kicked myself for not taking it 8 years earlier in college, when math in general was still fresh. It’s one of the few classes in my life where I’ve allowed myself to pass with a “C” Couldn’t tell you how I did it!
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