Basic calculus up to simple Differential Equations, Algebra up to Quadratics, and the basic Statistical tests should be a minimum.
Agreed on algebra (lots of practical uses) and statistics (used extremely often now, and often to mislead). But calc? I know a nuclear engineer who had trouble helping her kid with basic calc because she hadn't used it since college.
Totally agreed that the way we teach has a big impact on how difficult it is to learn, but that's an independent issue.
For calc it's not so much so that they can solve it on paper but that they recognise "this is gonna need a differential equation" and can then decide on plugging it into a computer or finding a nerd.
Agreed on algebra (lots of practical uses) and statistics (used extremely often now, and often to mislead). But calc? I know a nuclear engineer who had trouble helping her kid with basic calc because she hadn't used it since college.
Totally agreed that the way we teach has a big impact on how difficult it is to learn, but that's an independent issue.
For calc it's not so much so that they can solve it on paper but that they recognise "this is gonna need a differential equation" and can then decide on plugging it into a computer or finding a nerd.
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