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They know a little calc before they get into physics. And they often tell me about how they used it in my calc class.
But, what I wish we could do is stop treating Statistics like it's... the math class for "weak" students who couldn't do calculus.
Part of the problem is there is still a tendency to classify kids as "math people" and "not math people" although I'm breaking my peers of this notion every chance I get. Part of it is this snobbishness pure math people have about stats.
@futurebird
I work in tech, not physics or more classical engineering, but I can say that the number of times I've wished staff knew calculus when they didn't? Zero in twenty years. The number of times I've wished they knew basic statistics when they didn't? At least once a month, for twenty years.
@whknott
@dymaxion @futurebird @whknott Where I wish people understood calculus is in *political* discussions, particularly involving economics. Not any of the techniques, just the basic idea of a function, its derivative and its integral being different things.
And maybe the idea that if you have a function of multiple variables, its rate of change is going to depend on which specific things you're holding constant.
But that last one is a HARD idea. It doesn't even really show up in AP Calculus, it's a later class. It trips people up when they're studying college-level thermodynamics.
@mattmcirvin
You can give people an -idea- about it with the old "three ring notebook paper combined gas laws" explainer
@dymaxion @futurebird @whknott
@mattmcirvin @dymaxion @futurebird @whknott The quantity/rate confusion that annoys me most is “Oligarch Z has so much money, it’s more than the GDP of Fredonia.”
@mattmcirvin @dymaxion @futurebird @whknott yup only learned that in the fourth year of college. I would have to fall asleep and do the problem sets in my dreams and wake up and write the answers