I want to understand in the simplest terms why it is crucial for conputer science and if there is such a thing as a simple calculus exercise to be explained?
In: Mathematics
Once you’re into it, calculus mostly deals with handling “rates of change”… like, your velocity is the rate at which your position changes. Similarly, “acceleration” is how much your velocity changes.. like as your car goes from stopped (speed/velocity is 0) to highway speeds.
Very simple physics question: A car accelerates from a stop to 60 miles/hour smoothly over 30 seconds, and then maintains that speed until a total of 5 minutes have passed. Exactly how far did they travel at that 5 minute mark?
There are formulas you might be able to look up to tell you the answer, but it’s calculus that produced those formulas and prove them correct.
And I suppose that’s the main answer: physics is just full of calculus. And for computers to do higher level math for simulations.. video games, or physics applications, understand calculus is absolutely essential. And even for other things, calculus comes in really handy for some types of math like trigonometry. You can go a decent way without it, but at some point you’ll be glad you know some calculus.
Latest Answers