Fear Fest: Calculus. F**king Math.

OCTOBER 5th, Calculus

“Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little; but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.”
– Bertrand Russell

Ahhh, another fine October day to be alive.   There are Plenty of things in the world that will kill our body.   As we discovered yesterday, it could be an asteroid.   But what about what kills our spirit.   Ask any high school teen what subject they hate most.   I’m sure the most common answer given is math.   Now imagine that Math itself was a person.   Math wakes up, Math eats breakfast, Math gets ready for school.   What subject does Math itself dread going to?   Calculus.

I don’t think I’m the right person to describe calculus.   Mostly because I have no fucking clue what it does.   Much like I did in Calculus class, I’m just going to copy off the Asian kid next to me (or in this case, the internet).

Apparently Calculus is Latin for a small stone used for counting.    When you boil it down, Calculus is the study of change.   It falls more into the science fields than it does math.   My issues has always been that I am awesome at algebra, I am a stud at geometry, but I am an antediluvian troglodyte at calculus.   Look at these two pictures.

Can you spot the difference?   I can’t.   When I asked an expert, I am told that figure 1 depicts calculus equations, while figure 2 is hieroglyphics.

When it comes to calculus, I feel like a color blind guy on brown shirt day.   I just don’t get it.   However, I think that I just don’t want to get it.   There’s the popular child-like proclamation of “When am I ever going to use this!”   With calculus, for me this was true.   I liked algebra because I’m a sports fan.   I like geometry because I was a LEGO nut as a child.   I never had a toy where I had to figure out tangents and other calculustic (sp?) functions.

In short, if you like calculus, wonderful.   If you don’t get it, and you don’t want to get it, don’t worry.   If you don’t get it, but you want to get it, good luck.   I’ve got no pointers for you.

THE ANSWER:   Study or drop the class.