Thread: Using calculus w/o knowing it

...well if you are serious. Then read this:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Calculus.html

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To say calculus is useless is just ignorant. Calculus can be used to model just about everything within science, with extremly good precision. Physics, mechanics, chemistry and computer science heavily relies on calculus.

Compared to other branches of mathmatics, calculus is in my opininon quite hard. Convergence and limits are quite abstract mathematical tools and the proofs can be quite hard to understand. The theories of discrete mathematics and linear algebra are easier. The reason calculus is taught so early is because it is so useful.

Congratulations Bubba, good to see you by the way. IM me a time or so, would'ja?

Just wondering, what book did you get? I have a few of them floating around here, I might actually have the one you're talking about. The main one I was recommended is "Calculus Early Transcendentals" by James Stewart.

Beeing good programmer, means beeing good at calculus.

Uhh

Being a good programmer means being lazy. Employers don't care how genius your code is, they just want it to do what it's supposed to do and be done as fast as possible so that they can pay you as little as possible.

Professional programming sucks, so I hear

As little as possible? In banking and most other Wall St. jobs the programming/systems side gets paid about %200 that of the operations side. I've heard people complain about hard work with programming, but bad pay is never really a problem as far as I've seen. Perhaps if you're freelance, maybe.

Yes, employers want to pay you, the working cog in the wheel, as little money as possible.

whats calculus?

In dentistry it is calcium buildup on your teeth...I think.

In math, it's a branch of alebra that deals with quantities that continually change with respect to something else...alternatively, it's a branch of math that deals with infinity. Kind of a laymen's definition.

To say calculus is useless is just ignorant. Calculus can be used to model just about everything within science, with extremly good precision. Physics, mechanics, chemistry and computer science heavily relies on calculus.

Aye.


I think using calculus in a programming context is harder and more useful than learning it from a textbook standpoint.

I found a lot of calculus to be pretty easy. I actually found trig/pre calculus in high school harder to learn than multiple variable calculus. But, I do believe I have an intuitive knack for it anyway.