XPost: alt.home.repair   
   From: bowman@montana.com   
      
   On 12/27/2021 11:42 AM, knuttle wrote:   
   > On 12/27/2021 1:29 PM, rbowman wrote:   
   >   
   >>   We used Thomas and his first edition came out in 1952 and is in the   
   >> 14th edition now. I forget the author of the differential equations text.   
   >   
   > I used to read my father's physics books where I was amazed that in the   
   > twenties they taught math the way we currently teach high school students.   
   >   
   > I loved them.   
   > Because I could understand them.   
   >   
   > My college calculus and physics textbooks just gave us the equations for   
   > the   
   > most part and then we had to learn how the game worked of applying them.   
   >   
   > But in the olden days, they didn't do it that way even in college   
   > textbooks.   
   >   
   > It may be they didn't regularly teach calculus in high school in those   
   > days.   
   > Maybe that's why calculus started from the basics even in college   
   > textbooks.   
      
   The high school I went to had an 'enriched curriculum' program. In the   
   summer between my junior and senior years I took a linear equations   
   course in preparation for calculus during my senior year. The course was   
   in the afternoon after the normal school schedule and was taught by a   
   professor from RPI. The high school was almost adjacent to the RPI   
   campus so it was common to have interactions like that. The text was   
   Thomas, which was what was used at RPI.   
      
   Calculus definitely was not part of the normal high school curriculum.   
   The standard senior level math course was spherical trig. In retrospect,   
   since I do a lot of GIS work, spherical trig would have been more   
   useful.  This was 1964.   
      
   After graduation, I entered RPI and had a second dose of the aptly named   
   math professor, Dis Maly.  His wife had taught the linear equations   
   course and was great; his droning could put a hyperactive 6 year old to   
   sleep.   
      
      
      
   >   
   > Well, I took calculus in college. I never needed it. Did you?   
   > (Of course I'm not a mechanical engineer or a rocket scientist but neither   
   > are most people. Did you ever really NEED calculus in your entire life?)   
      
   Not really. The concepts are valuable but as far as sitting down with   
   pencil and paper and solving anything no. You can know what a FFT is and   
   even how to program the solution without delving into the notation. When   
   I roll up my extension cord I realize that if I crank the spool at a   
   constant rpm the speed at which the cat will need to chase the loose end   
   increases as a function of the circumference of the wire on the spool   
   but neither I nor the cat ever sat down and worked it out.   
      
      
   >   
   > At least physics is taught as problem sets.   
      
   Physics at RPI was a two year course. We used Resnick & Halliday since   
   Robert Resnick was a professor there. I consider that the most valuable   
   college course I took. While I eventually migrated to software from   
   hardware I can't say FORTRAN IV proved to be all that useful although   
   there still is a lot of Fortran lurking around. Fortunately it has   
   progressed past Hollerith cards. Being a lousy typist I do much better   
   with a decent programming editor.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)