Do Students Need Calculus Anymore?

Ask students this question and you’ll get a few responses of affirmation. Most would probably say no. Who wants to suffer through extremely detailed computations and formulas? I sure don’t. Mathematician Daniel Rockmore asks the provocative question:  “Is it time to kill calculus?” and what kind of mathematics do we need people to learn, as Popular Mechanics details: 

What math are people really using, and how can we prepare them to do it better, faster, and with more confidence? With arithmetic, that means ideas like rapidly making change or doing other transactional or household math in your head. And with Levitt’s new committee for reforming math curricula, it means more focus on statistics over calculus.

There’s another key point here. As more and more students study computing and programming, there’s incentive to give them access to discrete mathematics, which is the counterpoint to calculus’s continuous mathematics: think counting numbers versus decimals that stretch into infinity. And what Levitt wants to include—data science—is an interesting middle ground between the two, with rays that extend into programming, data entry and management, and even proofreading, a multidisciplinary field that teaches key ideas from many areas of study.

Levitt most directly advocates for turning the current model of high school math, the “algebra-geometry-algebra sandwich,” into something where students have more options for the second algebra. If that means more kids who opt away from precalculus because of their interests elsewhere, honestly, Sir Isaac Newton probably approves.

Image via Popular Mechanics