Why did I have to learn calculus? | Personal Experience

Recently we have shared a post with the same title. A lot of people decided to answer this question and we got some very interesting answers we want to share with you all. We believe it is interesting to read about other people’s experiences, maybe those experiences will help you decide if you want to study it or not.

Firstly I wanted to speak about my personal experience. A straight forward answer for this question is: “I had to study it in high school”. I am originally from Romania, where in the last 2 years of calculus you learn about limits, derivatives and integrals. I have to confess that it was not my favourite part of mathematics at that time. I could not understand the definition of limits with ε… it just did not make any sense to me. I was fine when we had to do derivatives and integrals, especially when I had to just use the formulas; but I didn’t understand where they were coming from. Also, at that point we didn’t do much about the applications of calculus in other sciences.

After high school, I moved to Aberdeen, Scotland and I had calculus in my first semester at university. At this point in my life the asnwer to “why did I have to learn calculus?” is “I totally loved mathematics and wanted to study more”. I remembered some of the theorems and formulas, but nothing much. What I really enjoyed this time around where all the applications. I still remember the day when my teacher explained that the integral was the area under a curve and he went on to explain the whole process using some graphs. For the first time, I saw the importance of calculus in other domains and it was fascinating. Also, I managed to understand the definition of limits (again a graphic explanation helped more). At that point I also had a better understanding of inifity and infinitesimally small, which helped more.

Personally, I think calculus can be quite hard to understand if you don’t see the applications or you don’t understand the basis of each concept. I still believe that this is one of the most useful part of mathematics. With this in mind, I want to share some asnwers we got on Facebook. I hope they will help you decided if you want to start learning calculus:

1. I learn calculus alone to help me understand how Einstein conceived its ideas of GR.
2. I remember the first time I saw the argument that the derivative of x² is 2x. It was pure ecstacy! Today I am a Mathematics College Professor, so it is perhaps unsurprising that I use Math every day. Nevertheless I am constantly amazed at how useful even very abstruse Mathematics is. Perhaps not everyone needs to learn it. But definitely someone needs to know it well.
3. In the 1960s India, school mathematics curricula (school ended in 11th grade) were strange. It had an intense emphasis on things like combinatorics, but no calculus. While in the 10th grade I had heard there is something called calculus, which makes understanding of science easier. So I borrowed a thin book from a neighbor…it dealt with concepts of limit, continuity, differntiation and integration. I remember having stayed awake nearly whole night going through it. It appeared like a book of adventure. And that was that.
4. For most people, calculus is a language to facilitate properly understanding something else, like physics, engineering, or statistics. Even if they never again explicitly use calculus, they gain a better understanding of those other topics thanks to being able to describe concepts using calculus during their learning.
5. I no longer remember what it was like to *not* know calculus. But as to why, it’s sort of a requirement for engineering.
6. Three reasons: because I could ( I thought for so many years that I couldn’t ), so I can teach high school math, and to keep a step ahead of my teen aged daughter.
7. In the second half of my highschool years I really got into physics. Nevertheless, I was constantly frustrated that we only studied highly idealized mechanical setups, which all needed their own ‘trick’ to work. Then my physics teacher finally told me that I was trying to solve 17th century problems with ancient greek math. Having been introduced to calculus and all of its applications within physics was nothing less than lifechanging for me. After I had no doubts anymore: I wanted to be a physicist.
8. I learned it because I majored in physics.
9. Why did i learn two foreign languages. Why did i have to read through novels and poems that have no relation to today. Why do i had to learn about Mozart and Beethoven, chords and musical notation? BECAUSE, it is part of our culture. The Why-question has only one answer: why not? 😛 😉
10. After 20 years teaching I still love it and see so many connections to “real life.” But do the vast majority of students “need” it? No, it’s a gatekeeper class. I’ve read this was true historically as well.
11. I learned for my engineering major. Then I liked it so much I changed majors to math.
12. For economics. It’s indispensable.
13. To understand the nature of change. It is no surprise that any decent book on climate is full of calculus based ideas.
14. I learned in high school, in an incredible and exciting class taught by a wonderful woman, because I wanted to keep learning more math. I forgot much of what I learned during my senior year (I did unrelated math) and the following summer. Had a terrible time understanding it first year in college. Went on to engineering school and did well through calc III but it took repeatedly using it in the following years of engineering school to really understand some of the ideas and methods.
15. I didn’t have to learn it. I rather chose to learn it, however, and I guess that if I hadn’t then I’d be sending requests to other work-people on how to get answers to problems instead of them sending their requests to me.
16. I was drawn to it, to help me understand why the physical world works the way it does.
17. I learned calculus because that is how the world works
18. Its application is endless…from engineering to medicine down to understand the working principle of…

It is awesome to read all of those great comments and see what people think about calculus and how they use it in their jobs. Very inspirational! Thank you everyone for sharing your opinions, you are awesome ^_^

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Lots of love and don’t forget that maths is everywhere! Enjoy!