The Ease of Calculus

"Calculus Does Not Have To Be Made Easy — It Is Easy Already" -Mr Escalante, "Stand and Deliver"

I thought that was an interesting quote because when you first hear it you think "calculus? Easy?? What's this guy smokin'?!". However, after taking an eight week calculus class this summer I must admit that, in a way, this is true. Now, before you ask if I've been smoking the same thing Mr Escalante must have been on, let me explain. Calculus isn't an easy subject to master, but once you understand how to use it, it makes certain math problems a whole lot easier than they would have been with ordinary math. For instance, say you want to find the area of an odd shaped plot of land. If you only had conventional math to work with, the only way to approximate this area is to draw a whole bunch of rectangles representing sections of the land (the more rectangles you have, the more accurate your approximation), find the area of every single rectangle, and add up all those areas. This will give you a somewhat rough approximation, and is very time consuming. If you have calculus to work with however, you can use a process called "integration". Integration is essentially a shortcut that adds up an infinite number of these rectangles, therefore coming up with a much more accurate solution, yet taking a fraction of the time it would take to do the problem manually.

So calculus really does make things easier for solving certain problems! I would even venture to say that most people don't realize how much better advanced math has made their lives. Things we use every day such our cars, computers, and the buildings we live in are made using advanced techniques such as calculus.

You have probably noticed how our society is continually increasing it's dependence on technology derived from advanced math, but one thing I have observed is that fewer and fewer people are learning how to use math. It's apparent that in a technological society such as ours, the people who understand math are going to be holding a lot of powerful cards over those who don't. I wonder what will happen to our country if we no longer have math people? Will we be crushed by rising tech nations such as India or China? Will we suddenly become the tech-less underclass in a technological world? Kind of a spooky version of the future isn't it? My prayer is that we as a country will reverse this trend of math illiteracy and avoid such a scenario.