[elric]

A long time ago, when I was in high school, we had an introductory course to differentials and integral calculus. When I asked what the purpose of integration was, the teacher shouted that I should save the stupid questions for my parents ... She was a shit teacher for various reasons, but that was the day that I lost my drive for maths.

It wasn't until years later that I found that it was all about "the area under the curve" and why that would be useful. At no point in those high school classes did we ever work a practical example. I was pissed off all over again when I found out how useful that stuff could be, and how much I'd missed out on.

I'm sure most teachers mean well, and I'm sure most of them try. But by god there are some truly awful twats out there who should never set foot in a classroom again.

[lo_zamoyski]

> When I asked what the purpose of integration was, the teacher shouted that I should save the stupid questions for my parents

What an awful person. Chances are she was getting defensive and covering for her own lack of understanding. If I were a parent, I would confront her about that, not least of all her contempt for students and for learning, but toward parents.

Teachers don't know everything, and when they don't know, they should be able to admit that without hesitation or defensiveness. This sets a good example in general, of humility, instead of inculcating the notion that life is about having all the answers, or rather, pretending to have all the answers. All this does is set up people to become imposters. Of course, if you're teaching calculus, you should have at least a basic grasp of the material, and if you don't, you should say so, so that you've not put in a position where you have to teach it.

> I'm sure most teachers mean well, and I'm sure most of them try.

I think it is generally accepted that primary education isn't exactly packed with the best candidates, both from the point of view of pedagogical ability as well as mastery of the material.

[Moru]

We had a good math teacher. There was a formula he just told us to memorize, the class asked how it worked but he just said we don't need to know why or how, just like we don't know how a calculator works. What he didn't know was that the class last week in electronics was about how calculators work.

He had to confess he didn't know why or how either of them works, he just uses them :-)

[HarHarVeryFunny]

I took both applied math and pure math (+ comp. sci) at uni, and was similarly frustrated at the applied math, which was all triple integrals and partial derivatives etc, and exactly zero examples given of where this stuff would be useful. I just stopped attending the class, since the downside of doing so was minimal. To this day I still don't know where one might apply triple integrals, although no doubt there are uses.

Perhaps a bit oddly I didn't have any problem with the pure math prof. also not offering any use cases, although of course it also does!

[billbrown]

I like this view of the integral (and generally regard this site as helpful to build intuitions).

https://betterexplained.com/articles/a-calculus-analogy-inte...