Now you see, here is a point on which I not only agree with you, I applaud you.

Bravo sir, well done!
Wellll.... my child got a 4.23 grade point average in high school, so there. :scholar:

I believe the reason for "math phobia" is that there is a greater risk of failure, and that failure can be measured.
We have raised a generation that have high self esteem but can't really produce.
Math has real answers, specific answers. ( well as long as we define the terms) In a base 10 system, 2+2 =4. "3" is a wrong answer'; not worth "partial credit". You just can't BS your way thru math.
However, you can certainly BS your way thru pshychology, or sociology, or even history. And you can feel good about it. I am married to a women who got partial credit on a history exam by answering the question, " What is the Monroe Doctrine" with " It was a doctrine by Monroe"

There are two classes of people posting in this thread. One class confuses arithmetic (and even calculus) with mathematics. These are computational schemes which come from mathematics.

Mathematics is about proofs and is definitely a creative process. There may indeed be "real answers," but in the real mathematical world, nobody knows what they are.

Thank the Gods,I knew it was something too esoteric and unnecessary for a simpleton like me:D

kerry- thanks for the memory... i remember the bus driver having one of those..

Actually, if you've used any of the recent composing and/or recording tools (Pro-Tools, Reason, Cakewalk, etc.), a good grasp of algebra goes a long way when editing a project...I can spend more time creating and less time figuring out the tool... :guitarist :computer:

Economists get into some really uncomfortable math, or at least the people who crunch their numbers do. When I actually thought I was going to proceed to a math degree, I took some linear algebra. Not to be confused with reg'lar old algebra, this stuff is hard. I found this old post wherein I described it in some detail:

http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/showthread.php?p=1026934#post1026934

So you took linear algebra, got discouraged, and became a cab driver.

You're like that character in Good Will Hunting.

The problem is that math is often taught by mathemeticians, not teachers.

Maybe I am too practical but I look at what a college degree can get me in the market place. Math has no market value to me, I have no desire to design buildings or be an engineer.

I can understand and respect education for the sake of education. But still some people spend a lot of time working on these degrees then get stuck working at crummy jobs with people who never went to college.

To me that’s the value of college. I could turn my high school diploma into a very comfortable living working construction. College is very expensive and very time consuming, so I want to get something out of it.

The value of a college education is not economic. There have been some interesting analysis done on spending $XXXX on a college education or investing it somewhere else. The somewhere else won.
I've made more money with my working class skills than I have with my academic skills (and I have 18 yrs of post high school education) but I wouldn't trade my education for anything.
I think college needs to be approached with the attitude, "How can this experience make me a richer, broader, more self-actualized person?"

Your goals are EXACTLY why a university education would be a complete PITA for you and a waste for the taxpayer. You need to go to an institution that gives you training and background to excel at your profession, not waste your time teaching subjects that have no value to you.

Bot

I don't know 4 more semesters and that degree is hanging on the wall!:D I do enjoy school to a point. I enjoyed my English classes, history was fun, poli sci was fun as well. I do take a lot of fun classes, but then they force you to take classes which at least I consider a waste of my time.

Health for example. Why did I need to spend hundreds of dollars last fall to be told that drugs are bad again? Please don't insult me. Don't get me going on gym either, wtf?:mad: I'm not taking it simple as that.

Math is another thing, for me its like banging my head into a brick wall, and sours me to a whole aspect of college.

I was never into school and had to be dragged kicking and screaming since day one. So take my point of view with a grain of salt.

I wish I had the raw talent that guy had. I was a modest talent, most parents wold love for their kids to have my math SATs, but I'm a cut below the real math whizzes.

It's hard to believe but cab driving is one trip of a job. You get totally random encounters with just about every type of person you could imagine. I mean, who hasn't taken a cab at least once or twice? And in a cab, people are trusting their life to you, it sorta makes them open up, about half of the time anyway. Oh man, I used to love it when the ladies would lean forward from the back seat, leaning on the front seat back.

And you see the mean streets up close, second only to what cops see, I'm guessing. It's a seriously dead end job though. I make as much now in 6 or 7 hours as I used to be happy to make in 2 or 3 ten to twelve hour shifts. :eek:

The more I think about it, rate of change is a tricky concept. When you're moving at 60 mph, your position is changing but the rate at which it is changing is constant. A body falling in a vacuum, say 1,000 miles away from earth, is changing speed, accelerating at a steady rate.

Best I can recall, calculus has two main functions: to find the slope of any line tangent to an X - Y axis graph at any point on it -- the derivative; and to find the area between a non - linear graph and, say, the X axis -- the integral.

Imagine a graph of the function Y = sinX + 2. Since the sin of any angle will always be between one and negative one, this function will be a sin wave completely above the X axis. With calculus, ideally you could find the area between the graph and the X axis for some portion of the graph. I say ideally because I can't recall if it only works with polynomials, where you have a finite number of constants and variables which are combined using only addition, subtraction, multiplication, and non-negative whole number exponents (raising to a power). This from Wikipedia, better than I could have said it. The sin function is not one of those. Not sure how you could use the ability to find the area between a curved line and the X axis, or between two curved lines, dlineated by straight lines on either end. I understand it opens all sorts of boxes though.

More to the point, derivatives find the slope of a line tangent to the graph at any point on the graph and give a value for the rate of change of that graph at that point. Again from Wikipedia: A derivative is an instantaneous rate of change: it is calculated at a specific instant rather than as an average over time.

And again, I'm not sure exactly what that operation is used for but I imagine physicists and aerospace engineers know quite well.