So, I don't mean to force you into something you don't want, but do you think people who don't understand exponential growth are missing something relative to you? That they could benefit from the knowledge you have?
That's what I know having understood calculus to those who have bits and pieces of the concepts (exponential growth included) but don't have a big picture. If you have the time and ability to learn more, why limit yourself? Why allow yourself to be put at a disadvantage? And worse (not saying you are, it's hard to gauge from your comment) why would you be in favor of stiffing other people from being better?
I'm not getting the impression commenters are trying to limit others. Rather, there is a strange obsession with math most individuals will never need and doesn't satisfy them, in a world where one can learn so much else.
Even the exponential growth through calculus example is obsessively nitpicky: just draw a few graphs of y=x, y=2x, y=x*x and y=2^X. Most people will grasp the idea, and it's 30 minutes at most.
> most people will grasp the idea, and it's 30 minutes at most
I think we experienced very different pandemics. I could pick 100 people off the street and I guarantee you 9/10s of them aren't able to do a logarithmic change of base. If you can't do that can you say you grasp exponential growth?
> If you have the time and ability to learn more, why limit yourself? Why allow yourself to be put at a disadvantage?
So what is that advantage for everyday people? I see some people are making it a "citizenship requirement" but except for exponent, which is not a part of calculus anyway (OP original point), there seems to be little advantage to it.
You cannot really understand the nature of exponentiation if you do not understand calculus! Whoever is saying is likely ignorant or they have a shallow understanding, and when I say shallow, I really mean it, as in their knowledge is not sufficient. You cannot know a how dependence based on a power over a linear relationship is "stronger" without talking about rate of change, which is literally calculus. Perhaps you can have an intuitive notion of change, and that's fine, but the point of education often is to either refine intuition or correct it.
And that then leads me to my point above: if your knowledge is shallow, to the point that it limits you, then why clamor to limit yourself or further to limit others?
That's what I know having understood calculus to those who have bits and pieces of the concepts (exponential growth included) but don't have a big picture. If you have the time and ability to learn more, why limit yourself? Why allow yourself to be put at a disadvantage? And worse (not saying you are, it's hard to gauge from your comment) why would you be in favor of stiffing other people from being better?