Greatest Software Ever Written 4231

There's no compulsion to learn if the press of a button provides the answer.

A scientist without at least a basic understanding of calculus is "hazardous waste" and should be dealt with accordingly.

Calculus and probability and statistics are useful tools that need to be understood to be used appropriately. "Scientists" who don't understand the use of the tools produce silly theories and predictions like "Earth's temperature to rise catastrophically by 6C (10F) by 2020".

Note that the basis of calculus and probability and statistics was taught in the last two years of high school when I was there; just 30 years ago. :-)

Nothing LIKE 20 years. It does take about a decade in many for it to sink in and to be appreciated.

As I began to understand statistics, I was somewhat baffled by the fact that other students studying e.g. "Economics" or even biology weren't required to learn any substantial statistics; just means, averages, etc but no probability or buttociated error analysis.

I was even more baffled in my first year of Uni., when a (chemistry postgraduate) lab supervisor marked down my lab report because I'd only shown the precision in the result that could reasonably be obtained when taking into account the precision of all the measurements and the corresponding error analysis.

Almost everybody else in the lab group had been able to produce 4 or 5 digits of precision in their report; from mostly 3-digit measurements. (Experimental determination of Avogadro's number, FWIW) -- "Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia ASCII ribbon campaign "Laws do not persuade just because X against HTML mail they threaten." and postings Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4BC - 65AD.