# Calculus A beautiful invention, but I wish the beauty behind it, and its history, would have been taught in school, instead of having me discover them 20 years later. ## See also - [[Backpropagation]] - [[COURSE - Everything is the same - Modeling engineered systems]] ## Links --- ### Ten lesson I wished I knew before teaching differential equations A PDF about the ten lessons Gian-Carlo Rota had learned before teaching [[Differential Equations]]: - [https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/lg5/Rota.pdf](https://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/lg5/Rota.pdf) 1. MOST OF THE MATERIAL NOW TAUGHT IN AN INTRODUCTORY DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS COURSE IS HOPELESSLY OBSOLETE 2. REDUCE TO A MINIMUM THE DISCUSSION OF FIRST ORDER DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE COURSE 3. LINEAR DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS WITH CONSTANT COEFFICIENTS ARE THE BOTTOM LINE 4. TEACH CHANGES OF VARIABLES 5. FORGET ABOUT EXISTENCE AND UNIQUENESS OF SOLUTIONS 6. LINEAR SYSTEMS WITH CONSTANT COEFFICIENTS ARE THE MEAT AND POTATOES OF THE COURSE 7. STAY AWAY FROM DIFFERENTIALS 8. AVOID WORD PROBLEMS 9. MOTIVATE THE LAPLACE TRANSFORM 10. TEACH CONCEPTS, NOT TRICKS Point 6 is especially interesting, because indeed no examples relevant to my interests were ever shown in the university courses for example, while if there had been a parallel drawn to programming and robotics and computers, I would have approached the subject very differently. Point 10 of course applies for most teaching. --- ## Logs [[2022-08-27]] - Created