davido (05/27/82)
---------- Excerpted from an article by Lee Dembart of the LA Times-Washington Post Service via the Portland Oregonian. Calculus, called one of the greatest achievements of the human mind, may be going the way of Latin -- more honored than taught. ... A growing number of mathematicians and computer scientists are urging schools to teach what is called discrete mathematics, which includes logic and probability and which studies how things combine and are counted -- topics that play a large role in problem-solving by computer. ... Calculus is the tool of the continuous approach, and the computer is threatening to remove it from its preeminent position. After several years of discussion, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation of New York has scheduled an invitation-only conference for mathematics educators next month at Williams College in Massachusetts in hopes of drawing up a new curriculum that includes discrete mathematics. ... "It is very foolish," said Richard Hamming, an adjunct professor of computer science at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, Calif. "Chiefly, the people who have gotten into computing don't know mathematics," he scoffed. "They don't know what they're talking about when they propose removing calculus."