Why do smart people often study Calculus?

Question

Hi everyone, why do smart people often study Calculus? I studied Calculus already, I saw it was not so important, but why smart kids or smart peole study Calculus in the Universities? Is Calculus important? Is it applicable to our daily life or in our world?

I agree with RL612, he knows a lot.

Because in College Calculus is a must take or required course, so people take it. But I doubt that they use it at work. Because most engineers or scientists today concentrate on design and developing softwares, so I don't think they use much Calculus.

Answer 1

The concepts of calculus are important to nearly all kinds of engineering, even if you don't directly use the derivations. It is a fundamental tool for any physics work beyond the most basic. If you 'saw it was not so important', the problem is with your vision. True, 97% of the people in the world survive without knowing it. Perhaps even 60% of those who learn it, at at least a beginner level, never use it again. For the others, it ranges from useful to essential to fundamental. If you choose not to learn it while you can, you choose not to put a valuable tool into your toolbox. It may be an irreversible choice, since age makes it much harder to learn.

Answer 2

Calculus is the language of physics which is the foundation of engineering. Without calculus there would be no electronics, no tall buildings, no engines, no electricity, no nothing!

Here's less obvious example: Ever wonder why a soda can is the shape it is? Probably not but its because its shape has the maximum volume to surface area ratio reducing the amount of aluminum needed and thus cost. How did we determine this? Volumetric integrals.

My guess is you must of had a horrible teacher who didn't encourage you to apply calculus to the real world.

Answer 3

Calculus is a stepping stone to other mathematics. Not an end in itself.

Mathematicians often transform their problem domains into other domains that can more easily be solved. Here is an example....

Logarithms..

We all know that using a logarithm table or the logarithm function on a calculator can allow us to add instead of multiplying or we can subtract instead of dividing. This is an example of a transform.
1. we transform the original problem by taking the logarithms of the numbers
2. we add or subtract because we find that easier
3. we lookup the inverse transform in our tables to see what the answer is in theoriginal domain.

Calculus introduces the Laplace tranform. Using the Laplace transform we can transform a lot of differentiation and integration type problems into the Laplace domain where we can use simple algebra on the Laplace operator, "s". Having solved the problem algebraically -which we find easier than differentiation or integration we can then look up the inverse laplace transform in a set of tables -or work out the inverse from its definition in order to transform the answer back into the problem's original domain.

This technique is applied in engineering over and over and a discrete sampled domain transform called the Z-transform let's us solve digital signal problems in a similar way.

It doesn't stop there... Fermat's last theorem was proved by transforming the original problem into another domain whereupon another body of math could be brought to bear on it to solve the proof and then the proof could be transformed back to the original domain.

Calculus is good training for your mind and an absolute necessity for further studies in math or physics or engineering.

Answer 4

Engineering, astronomy, astrophysics, particle physics, and better math all require calculus, its form of the language of the sciences. And whilst some engineers and scientists layout and strengthen application, there are lots of extra organic scientists that would desire to understand calculus and different bigger math to make experience of the classes they get the IT human beings to create, and to understand the technological know-how in the back of experimental and observational effects. so which you won't think of they pick it (probably on the grounds which you do not pick to take it and are seeking for for the clarification why you may desire to not), yet its a call for for a reason.

Answer 5

In answer to your question, calculus is important for engineers and scientists for their jobs, and they tend to be smart. 'Just a wild guess here, but I suspose you're not one of those. Calculus is not "applicable to our daily life" in that case.

Answer 6

Just because you "saw it was not so important," doesn't mean the rest of the world thinks so.

Calculus forms an extremely important foundation for countless scientific disciplines (physics, astronomy, engineering, finance, to name a few).

If you didn't see what was so "important" about it, then you didn't truly understand it.