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I worked with students in a “intro calculus for humanities” type class for many years (as a sort of undergrad tutoring role, so, it was a while ago, I’m old now). Despite this experience it is pretty shocking to me that there are, like, actually adult people walking around who can’t at least do a derivative.

Spending too long in STEM academics absolutely warps your view of the mathematical skill floor I think.



At one point, I was able to do 3-dimensional vector calculus on electromagnetic fields. Now, I'm not sure I could do even a basic derivative.

Use it or lose it.


I mean, even when I was tutoring it I’d double check most of the equations just to be sure.

I’m sure chain rule, product rule, and polynomials would come right back to you, and everyone has to look up the trig functions anyway.




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