[Discuss] OT: Do CS grads need calculus?

[Robert Krawitz]

I've never used calculus professionally.  I've wound up in mostly low
level systems work, but 30+ years ago I wouldn't have known what I was
going to do.

My opinion is that calculus is an important branch of mathematics, and
it's important for what I might call a liberal scientific education.
There are more situations than one might think in real life where
understanding the fundamentals of calculus -- the derivative and the
integral -- is helpful.  One very obvious example is the deficit and
the debt -- the debt is the integral from time0 to now of the deficit;
the deficit is the first derivative of the debt.

Actually, there's one software case in which I've used the basic
concept of the derivative: in Gutenprint, I've selected algorithms to
try to avoid discontinuities in the first and second derivatives of
the ink curves.
-- 
Robert Krawitz                                     <rlk at alum.mit.edu>

***  MIT Engineers   A Proud Tradition   http://mitathletics.com  ***
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