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Math Education

'To Keep Students in STEM fields, Let's Weed Out the Weed-Out Math Classes' (scientificamerican.com) 365

Posted by msmash from the remarkable-perspective dept.
Pamela Burdman, the executive director of Just Equations, a policy institute focused on the role of math in education equity, writes in an op-ed for Scientific American: All routes to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) degrees run through calculus classes. Each year, hundreds of thousands of college students take introductory calculus. But only a fraction ultimately complete a STEM degree, and research about why students abandon such degrees suggests that traditional calculus courses are one of the reasons. With scientific understanding and innovation increasingly central to solving 21st-century problems, this loss of talent is something society can ill afford. Math departments alone are unlikely to solve this dilemma. Several of the promising calculus reforms highlighted in our report Charting a New Course: Investigating Barriers on the Calculus Pathway to STEM , published with the California Education Learning Lab, were spearheaded by professors outside of math departments. It's time for STEM faculty to prioritize collaboration across disciplines to transform math classes from weed-out mechanisms to fertile terrain for cultivating a diverse generation of STEM researchers and professionals. This is not uncharted territory.

In 2013, life sciences faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles, developed a two-course sequence that covers classic calculus topics such as the derivative and the integral, but emphasizes their application in a biological context. The professors used modeling of complex systems such as biological and physiological processes as a framework for teaching linear algebra and a starting point for teaching the basics of computer programming to support students' use of systems of differential equations. Creating this course, Mathematics for Life Scientists, wasn't easy. The life sciences faculty involved, none of whom had a joint appointment with the math department, said they resorted to designing the course themselves after math faculty rebuffed their overture. The math faculty feared creating a "watered-down" course with no textbook (though after the course was developed, one math instructor taught some sections of the class).

Besides math, the life sciences faculty said they experienced "significant pushback" from the chemistry and physics departments over concerns that the course wouldn't adequately prepare students for required courses in those disciplines. But the UCLA course seems to be successful, and a textbook based on it now exists. According to recently published research led by UCLA education researchers, students in the new classes ended up with "significantly higher grades" in subsequent physics, chemistry and life sciences courses than students in the traditional calculus course, even when controlling for factors such as demographics, prior preparation and math grades. Students' interest in the subject doubled, according to surveys.
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'To Keep Students in STEM fields, Let's Weed Out the Weed-Out Math Classes' More

'To Keep Students in STEM fields, Let's Weed Out the Weed-Out Math Classes'

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  • other filler and fluff need to go like gym classes at X4 the cost of an good 2 year membership for just one class.

    • Which college has a gym class as a core requirement for a STEM degree? I took a 1-credit bowling class in college but it was an -elective-.

      That said, 99% of computer science graduates will never need to solve a differential equation. That math course has no business being a core requirement in a computer science degree but it gets thrown in there because: STEM.

      • Which college has a gym class as a core requirement for a STEM degree?

        The closest I can come to an answer:
        Colleges require a high school diploma or GED, and high schools tend to require credits in PE for graduation.

        That said, 99% of computer science graduates will never need to solve a differential equation.

        And the other 1 percent (such as myself) are employed in fields such as real-time simulation. The movement method of an object in a video game, for example, often uses a form of numerical integration.

      • That said, 99% of computer science graduates will never need to solve a differential equation. That math course has no business being a core requirement in a computer science degree but it gets thrown in there because: STEM.

        Yep.

      • That said, 99% of computer science graduates will never need to solve a differential equation.

        99% of computer science graduates have never implemented a state automaton in their pst-graduation regular jobs. Yet the world would br a better place if building software around state machines was the norm, not the exception.

        My point being: if you want to do cool stuff, a broad knowledge base will enhance your problem solving and abstraction skills in good ways. It's not about actually solving a differential equation, it's about knowing that such a concept exists, what it's good for, and when you need to a

      • Which college has a gym class as a core requirement for a STEM degree? I took a 1-credit bowling class in college but it was an -elective-.

        It may be different now, but 30 years ago at the college I attended, all undergrads were required to have 4 semesters of PE. All incoming freshmen took PE100 which was just a fitness assessment at the beginning and end (you had to show improvement) and simple intro cardio and strength training exercises. After that you could have any three electives you wanted. I took bowling as well, plus archery and golf.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by bjwest ( 14070 )

        ... 99% of computer science graduates will never need to solve a differential equation. That math course has no business being a core requirement in a computer science degree but it gets thrown in there because: STEM.

        I'm sorry, but a computer science degree means you should know how a computer works from key press to output on the screen, and every thing in between. You should know how a compiler compiles, how libraries work, and, yes, the maths that go on in the inner working of the computer and calculations. If you don't know this, you're a developer, not a computer scientist, and I believe even good developers should know how to calculate angles and such things that are taught in math courses. Unless, of course, a

  • If you really want to keep all the students (Score:3, Informative)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @12:33PM (#62363283)

    Don't ask them any hard questions at all, I guess.

    I don't know that I want to be flying in an airplane designed by one of these guys, though.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by poet ( 8021 )

      As someone who has navigated STEM fields for longer than many, Calculus is not needed for at least 90% of STEM.

      Yes there are places it makes sense (Physics or BioChem for example) but for your standard, I am going to be a software engineer or database admin? It is a total waste of time.

      • Yes, and no. While Calculus may ultimately be used by many as often as the fine China, as a weeder course, it serves another purpose: it removes the people who, when the going gets tough, will give up.

        This is the secret: STEM professors / TAs / etc. are a finite resource. They only want to invest time & energy in you if you are willing to endure to the end. Pass the weeder courses, show them that you are only going to leave if they hand you that degree, and they will carry you through the higher level c

        • Except weeding out students that way demonstrably leads to keeping students who perform worse

          According to recently published research led by UCLA education researchers, students in the new classes ended up with "significantly higher grades" in subsequent physics, chemistry and life sciences courses than students in the traditional calculus course

        • Endurance is the trademark of the STEM fields.

          You misspelled overwork and employee abuse.

      • You misunderstand the purpose of mathematics knowledge, at least for most fields. The purpose is to instill hard thinking, logic, perseverance, grappling with and mastering difficult concepts. And most of all, it is to weed out the thick and lazy.

        "There is no Royal Road to geometry." -- Euclid of Alexandria to Ptolemy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )
          I agree with the first part of your post.
          But I don't think you should ever justify a course "to weed out the thick and lazy". It would be a waste of everyone's time to do that, and it should be easy enough to weed them out without it.

        • From an employer's perspective, the purpose of education is to create a big labor pool.

          In the case of, say, software development, which kind of labor pool do you think employers want? One in which there are very few practitioners, but those practitioners are super-geniuses? No way! They hate that!
          The opposite extreme has the market flooded with people who can do the basics of the job but can't accomplish anything that is very hard. That's no good either, because the employers just face very high employe

      • Doing software engineering and system architecture over the years I have had to know calculus, numerical analysis, linear algebra, etc... I have used these things many times. Optimization problems are actually fun when you have the right tools. Getting more performance out of a complex system without resorting to a big hardware investment is pretty satisfying, and at times the complex math has helped a great deal. Sure, you can split the job between "engineers" who know the math and "administrators, operato

      • Yes there are places it makes sense (Physics or BioChem for example) but for your standard, I am going to be a software engineer or database admin? It is a total waste of time.

        I'm a system administrator and database admin whose degree was in physics, you insensitive clod!

        (That statement is actually true)

    • Re:If you really want to keep all the students (Score:4, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @12:42PM (#62363319) Homepage Journal

      Or... maybe do a better job preparing them to answer hard questions?

      Maybe at least *some* of the people who are "no good at math" are no good at learning from courses designed by math professors.

      • Or... maybe do a better job preparing them to answer hard questions?

        I actually agree with this, although I think we should really be doing it much earlier in the students' lives (and yes, that would involve us spending more money on our schools and teachers).

        More broadly speaking... it's also more or less how I feel about affirmative action type programs in general - I'm in favor of the goals; I just think most of the existing programs go at it bass-ackwards.

      • Probably most of these got the "no good at math" idea back in high school, or earlier. Or they're being told constantly that you don't need math for your job. Or they're being told that they don't need math for their gender or race, by peers, parents, even teachers.

        I think anyone who can get past algebra 1 and 2 can get past first year calculus.

      • Yes!

        at my uni, I didn't learn maths in the maths department. I learned maths for engineers taught by engineering lecturers in the engineering department. It was light on pure maths but covered what we needed to do actual engineering. And it was taught by people who find pin joined frames more intuitive than abstract algebra.

    • I'd wager the number of people with degrees who use calculus on a daily basis is probably 1:500k.

      • What about number using calculus one day a year? Numbers go way up then. They go up even higher if they use concepts first learned in calculus.

        I saw my cousins, who are all in the agriculture business, arguing during Thanksgiving once about a problem that was essentially calculus, eve asking once "what's the first derivative?" Ok, so maybe my family is smarter than average :-)

    • The question is whether the weeding out of students is accurate in terms of keeping those students that would make good STEM professionals. I think there is a great deal of reasonable doubt about this accuracy. Think of all the closed-form integrals that you had to memorize, analyze, and derive in calculus. How many of those integrals have you used in your professional career? My guess is that for the vast majority of engineers, the answer is zero. The concept of the integral is useful, and learning ho

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      Don't ask them any hard questions at all, I guess. I don't know that I want to be flying in an airplane designed by one of these guys, though.

      The article says "students in the new classes ended up with "significantly higher grades" in subsequent physics, chemistry and life sciences courses".

      Isn't that an unequivocally good thing? an objective proof that the new style of math courses was measurably more effective at teaching maths and preparing students to work in science, than the old math courses?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        But did these students take a "real" calculus class between this course and the Physics courses? Or was this course *instead*?

        For that matter, were these the regular calculus based physics courses or the calculus-free life science physics courses?

        Without answers to both of those, we have an entire range of possibilities from "this class was helpful prep to take a real calculus course" to "this class is *more* useful than regular calculus and should replace it."

        hawk

    • People going into Life Sciences are not building airplanes. Your comment makes no sense. Why wouldn't you teach math based around biological environments for your Life Science majors? Why would you think someone going into the study of biological organisms needs to have a deep understanding of complex calculus? That isn't their field. Math SHOULD be designed around where and what you will be doing in your chosen field.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        More to the point, if the student is into biology, then teaching math from a biology perspective is more likely to make sense to the student while teaching math from a strictly mathematics perspective is not. They can still learn complex calculus, it just needs to resonate with something the student already gets.

  • ...then it would end up with "weed-out physics classes". And "weed-out science classes" in general. The math classes are definitely not there for fun. They teach the bare minimum required to survive the relentless onslaught of followup courses. That some people have problems even with the math classes is hardly a reason to remove them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by narcc ( 412956 )

      At least read the summary. The improved math classes lead to better performance in subsequent sciences courses.

    • Calculus, Vector and Matrix Algebra classes are taught because they are essential for subsequent courses. Calculus is foundational for any of the hard sciences (engineering, physics, and to a lesser extent chemistry and biology.) Second year electrical engineering has Fourier Theory. Second year mechanical engineering has torque moments and inertia integrals. Physics has the tensors, Hamiltonians and quantum mechanics. The field of numerical chemistry is blossoming. Biology and medicine is covered in

      • Yeah I do EE work and worked with plenty of MEs. Exactly one time I can recall calculus being needed for some datasheet calculations and it turns out the datasheet had an error to begin with.

      • I think the problem is that there is a lot of STEM work where breadth is more valuable than depth. Take programming. Not everyone is going to build a 3D game engine. There's a lot of boilerplate, plugging libraries together, and building CRUD interfaces to data. Off the shelf software doesn't cover everyone's needs, but those same people don't always need a lot.

        I would argue that college is useful for programming that is not ground-breaking. Self-taught people repeat all the mistakes that they could le

      • If you want more people in STEM, teach calculus in grade 9. That way students have more time to get there heads around the topic.
        The topic is not about teaching calculus or not.
        It is about: making it (not!) so hard that it is impossible to pass for 90% of the STEM students. Especially if the hard part is completely irrelevant for the topic they study.

        Usually people learn the opposite way around the best: you have to solve a problem, but can't because you lack the understanding of math to solve it. Now you h

    • ...then it would end up with "weed-out physics classes". And "weed-out science classes" in general.

      That's a good thing isn't it? If we have scientists who don't like and aren't good at science then weeding them out and sending them off to do something more interesting and useful with their lives might have value. Nothing worse than CS grads who hate CS and desperately want to be managers. If they had gone off on a photography or maybe cooking course then they might actually be adding value to the world and, because they didn't hate their work, might even be more successful.

      The math classes are definitely not there for fun. They teach the bare minimum required to survive the relentless onslaught of followup courses. That some people have problems even with the math classes is hardly a reason to remove them.

      Looking at the article, it se

      • There's nothing worse than being a CS grad and being stuck doing programming grunt work. But the jobs aren't really offered to people without a degree. You also don't want a self-taught programmer who hasn't already made all their beginner mistakes yet. The number of degree programs need to diversify to encompass the variety of talent needed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      ...then it would end up with "weed-out physics classes". And "weed-out science classes" in general. The math classes are definitely not there for fun. They teach the bare minimum required to survive the relentless onslaught of followup courses. That some people have problems even with the math classes is hardly a reason to remove them.

      The article says "students in the new classes ended up with "significantly higher grades" in subsequent physics, chemistry and life sciences courses".

      What you're saying contradicts the article. The article says that the new-style math courses actually led to students doing *better* in physics. Either you're wrong or the article's objective measurements are wrong.

      • Then the summary is wrong. Simple as that.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fazig ( 2909523 )

          Besides math, the life sciences faculty said they experienced "significant pushback" from the chemistry and physics departments over concerns that the course wouldn't adequately prepare students for required courses in those disciplines. But the UCLA course seems to be successful, and a textbook based on it now exists. According to recently published research led by UCLA education researchers, students in the new classes ended up with "significantly higher grades" in subsequent physics, chemistry and life s

  • "STEM needs to stop being hard because it's one of the very few ways that you can still make a living in this country."

    • Re:All I hear is (Score:5, Insightful)

      by narcc ( 412956 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @12:56PM (#62363379) Journal

      You're not paying attention, then. Read the summary. They changed how the course was taught, and the student's math skills improved, leading to better outcomes in later science courses vs the students that took the old weeder course.

      Harder does not equal better. Harder very often just means 'poorly designed'.

  • Not everyone is cut out for a STEM career (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FuzzMaster ( 596994 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @12:40PM (#62363307)
    We need carpenters, journalists, and all sorts of other non-STEM workers, too. There is no value to civilization in placing people in STEM jobs who aren't good at it, whatever the reason may be.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Of course carpenters definitely need to know math; they use it every day in their work, although there are tricks and rules of thumb that make the math much easier. Maybe we should be teaching those tips and tricks and kids will stick with math more. When doing carpentry work and other building work, I regularly use trigonometry, basic algebra, and ratios (proportional and inverse).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        Oh and all journalists should have a basic working knowledge of statistics and probability as well. Should be required courses at colleges and unis for all journalism majors. Actually all citizens desperately need to understand the field in order to see through all the lies that are out there these days.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ediron2 ( 246908 )

      'placing people in STEM jobs who aren't good' is flawed logic. STEM expertise != calculus. Frankly, I'd be weeded out by organic chemistry and other biological science classes. Among friends who sucked at calculus, are great talents in stats, circuit design, process improvement. And most of them can intuitively handle function curves like exponential growth/decay, 1/(x+n) asymptotes, slope/rate, multivariable functions, and trig/oscillation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      Yeah, journalists definitely don't need STEM. /s

      This is why we end up with a society of ignorance where power gets measured in kilowatt-hours per year.

  • I think that TECH / IT needs TRADES schools and not the old degree system.
    Also the US system leads to monster sized loans that are becoming an big trun off for some.

    Now say I think maybe even go the union route and have an journeyman system for some tech jobs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wiggles ( 30088 )

      The trade schools come from the tech company certs.

      MCSE, CNE, A+, CCNA, RHCE -- those are the trade school equivalents.

      I think community colleges should partner with the tech companies to offer classes that result in these certs at the end of a curriculum.

      I haven't looked in 20 years though, so for all I know, they do this already.

      • Way back in the early 2000's, I went to a trade school like program where I learned the MCSE in 6 weeks of courses (one for each test in the NT MCSE), the school was a part of the local University, but not actually a University degree style program.

        I think this exists already.

  • "We need more people with scientific understanding. We therefore should stop trying to make them learn scientific understanding because that's just too hard. What's important is that they have the magic piece of paper certifying that have scientific understanding."

  • Gatekeepers (Score:3)

    by TJHook3r ( 4699685 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @12:41PM (#62363313)
    Revolutionary idea but perhaps traditional maths teaching is not working for many people? Barbara Oakley is a professor with some interesting ideas on teaching. It's not about lowering the bar, it's about helping more people reach it.

    • Re:Gatekeepers (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @01:00PM (#62363395) Homepage Journal

      > maths teaching is not working

      That's the thing. The weed-out math classes are 230 students in a lecture with a professor who doesn't want to be there and the short-straw TA's and the attitude is "teach yourself the subject if you're any good." For that they charge $3500 at an average school. Basically if you're exceptional OR if your high school was, you move on.

      The NSF has a deliberate strategy to minimize the number of Americans in STEM and use immigrant grad students as quasi slave labor to increase a prof's H-index and therefore grant funding. The schools take 40-60% for 'overhead' and fully support this strategy.

      Eric Weinstein has spoken extensively on this; probably the best source of more detail. It's destroying the future of America.

  • I was a reasonably decent math student, but I struggled in calc due to the extensive algebra involved in rearranging equations. It seemed like others did too. I think improving and reinforcing algebra would make it easier for people to succeed in calc. It's a skill that would have helped in physics class as well.

    Offering some practical examples would also help enormously. Maybe I was just too bored to remember clearly, but I don't recall being presented with a single practical application in any of the

    • I think improving and reinforcing algebra would make it easier for people to succeed in calc.

      When I was in school in the late '80s, you had to take 5 years of classes with "algebra" in the title before you were allowed to take calculus.
      My kids now in junior high and high school seem to be going through the same thing: year after year of practice manipulating polynomials and solving equations.
      I don't know what more they could add to the curriculum to "reinforce algebra".

      In 1998 I taught a university Calculus 1 course as a graduate TA. I don't remember much "weeding out", though I do remember the stu

  • I like math although I am not a mathematician by any definition, but I do not have found memories of taking calculus. The course stressed formal proofs that were only truly of interest to a math major and had nothing to do with my ability to use the tools to solve actual problems. It was really rather odd, since I was taking calculus I, physics 1, and chemistry 1 at the same time and often found myself doing applied math that we had not yet covered in the math course. Unless you are a math major, I do no

  • Differential Equations? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tommeke100 ( 755660 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @12:57PM (#62363381)
    I agree with one point. There are very talented developers that flunked out of Computer Science because of the math that could code circles around the other students. I knew a guy in my freshman/sophomore year ( must have been 1996/97) that had written a Java interpreter or compiler (don't remember if it was just interpreting or compiling to bytecode) in Scheme (a lightweight Lisp-like language) while others were still learning about binary trees and hashtables. Dude flunked out because of the math classes.
    I disagree in the sense that Computer Science is also Science. You can't make Science easier, the goal is to get better insights, not less.
    So, if we want to churn out more people with STEM degrees to feed the economy, we should create curriculums that do just that. Vocational Schools and Colleges for example.
    if you create an AI or ML degree where students don't know the basics of partial differential equations, how good an AI/ML engineer will they really be?
    If you have biologists and virologists that don't know how to perform or interpreter proper statistical analysis of their data, would you consider them competent to operate in a laboratory environment?

    • There are very talented developers that flunked out of Computer Science because of the math that could code circles around the other students.

      This, only 40 years too late. I wasn't a complete loss at math - I managed algebra and geometry all right - but for whatever reason I just couldn't get my brain around even the simplest calculus concepts. But coding was (and still is) my life; I like to believe that I was (and still am) reasonably talented at the craft.

      Thankfully my university offered a business degree (or, as we say in Texas, a "bidness" degree) for computer geeks so I was able to change gears and learn useless management and marketing c

    • I agree with one point. There are very talented developers that flunked out of Computer Science because of the math that could code circles around the other students.

      You've hit on a key point - developers aren't computer scientist or engineers. They can be very good at developing, which is a skill in its own right, but so is Computer Science or Engineering. Different people will gravitate towards one or teh other, depending on talent and interest; trying to force some specific knowledge for the sake of it isn't useful.

  • Talking about how this is a terrible idea destroying the sciences in the name of "wokeness" or "sjw".

    Of course, in their desire to be logical and rigorous they completely overlook the last paragraph of the summary (emphasis added):

    But the UCLA course seems to be successful, and a textbook based on it now exists. According to recently published research led by UCLA education researchers, students in the new classes ended up with "significantly higher grades" in subsequent physics, chemistry and life sciences

  • I spilled my coffee over my keyboard...

    Those I remember who were not able to understand derivative I would not call talent...

    They did well however in management or marketing - but not STEM...

  • Computer Science alumni here, that STEM enough for you?

    I still remember getting to Heuristic Programming class. One of the topics was neural networks. That was exciting to me. How to write a program that can learn! I was eager to get into it and neural nets are still relevant to the cutting edge today.

    Unfortunately understanding how results feed back in a neural network and thus how to make a neural network learn required things that are taught in Calc 3. This was not listed as a requirement for the course

  • I agree that we should get rid of math education as it currently is. We should teach trades math and numerical computing, not formula memorization.

  • Let's also remove science, technology and engineering classes from the STEM program. Those tend to be hard sometimes as well. And they will even become harder after removing math from the program. There is absolutely no way anyone can have a through understanding of science without detailed knowledge of calculus. If students are able to achieve "significantly higher grades" in physics courses without taking calculus first, these are not actually physics courses. Which is something that seems to become more

    • In lieu of math, may I suggest doing watercoloring instead? Look at the pretty colors. Good job, what a lovely blob, you get a STEM certificate now.

  • Look, we do not teach a course called Computer Languages: LISP, Ruby, Java, Python, Basic, C++, where you are expected to become proficient in all 6 languages. We split those up into different classes.

    This is not because they are different topics - there is a huge similarity among all those languages. They all have variables, they all have loops, etc. etc.

    Instead we split them up because it is too much to learn in one lesson. We split them up by sub-topics, despite having to explain a loop is in each of

  • Back when I was a lad, if you wanted to study programming, you had to take classes in the CS department. That department was getting large and crowded and many of non-CS people were learning tons of things which weren't directly useful. There was a move to create "programming for biologists" or "programming for physicists" classes.

    This may be similar. Lots of the math I learned turned out to be pointless. OTOH, I can't imagine working in aerodynamics with only what I learned.

    Anyway, it's certainly possible

  • The math classes are not "weed out" classes. They are needed. Sure, you may make them a bit more applied, but STEM graduates need to be able to handle mathematics competently and they need to bring the intelligence needed for that to the table. All that removing the math classes or making them much simpler does is producing incompetent or semi-competent STEM graduates.

    Now, why not have more STEM graduates this way? Simple: Incompetent and semi-competent STEM graduates routinely make very costly mistakes. Fo

  • You don't need metallurgy to use a hammer (Score:3)

    by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @01:15PM (#62363477)

    You don't need to understand metallurgy to use a hammer.

    There are people that believe studying the tool itself is worthwhile. But for most people, what's important is how that tool helps them do what they're trying to do.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Improv ( 2467 )

      Without a good understanding of mathematics and statistics, one can't progress in several other fields.

  • Until I was introduced to two things.
    This dates from almost 50 years ago when I was a Mechanical Engineering Student.

    The first thing was a textbook that wasn't aimed at pure maths students. I still have this book on a shelf in my office. It is called 'Engineering Mathematics' by K A Stroud.
    The second was Laplace Transforms. Again, a book my Mr Stroud came to the rescue.

    From struggling with calculus I became proficient in using it to solve problems in Control Engineering.
    I went on to work on Autopilots.

    Anyth

  • The calc classes in some engineering fields are needed. What is not needed is explicitly making everyone work hard memorizing equations that you will have at your fingers in the real world. This memorizing rewards hard work/studying without actual understanding most of what is going on. The memorization is a lot of what is used in the weed-out classes and really weeds out some people with a actual understanding of what is really going on and a real ability to do the real world work.

    I know I had classmat

  • Please, please fuck off. Without math, you aren't STEM. If you refuse to do mathematics, either learn it or STAY THE FUCK AWAY from STEM. I get it, you self-titled "software engineers" took a python certificate or a web design for absolute idiots course online; now you think you're "engineers." Fool! You are not an engineer if you can't do calculus up to multi-variable. Fuckk off. Every degree that ends with the word "Engineering," at least that is the case at top schools like Stanford, has to have up to mu

  • This sounds like the usual nonsense coming form a faculty of education. they completely miss the point of a STEM degrees.The summary talks about selective calculus classes being an obstacle for less math intensive degrees like biology but in most programs in biology maths courses are already watered down.

    It is a stupid idea though as when i was younger biologists's job opportunities already depended on their proficiency in maths. In scientific magazines they stressed scientists usually found jobs easily exc

  • There are so many reasons to disqualify people from doing a particular course at a particular time, they may lack personal integrity or critical thinking skills, or just not yet be mature enough to focus or handle the subject matter or the vocation.

    IMO math is a poor choice of weeding criteria and I think its misuse in this way contributes to the "math is hard" fallacy. That and the insane test regimens that prioritize test taking ability and speed over math comprehension and problem solving

    Math can be taug

  • While no panacea, I think that people being in a position to teach who can break things down into small enough pieces, AND explain it in plain English definitely makes it easier to grasp, and even enjoy mathematics (AND see its potential relevance)

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