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Comment by georgeecollins | Hacker News Reader

My kid is on this track exactly and I think it is a joke that some kids take multivariable calculus or linear algebra in high school. Enrichment and AP has become an arms race for the upper middle class to get their kids into good schools. Realistically, if you are STEM major you probably are going to have to retake these classes anyway. And if you aren't you probably won't need them.

I know some kids are really exceptional and maybe ought to take this much math that young. But I think a lot do it now to get into a college.

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I did have to retake multivariable (calc 3) and linear algebra, but I'm grateful for that senior year HS class because: - the college versions were a breeze, which was a relief because the workload from other courses was high - having a good intuition about divergence & curl made physics (electromagnetism) easier, and linear algebra was used in differential equations before I actually took linear algebra

So I think for a high school student who knows they're heading for STEM, with room on their schedule, it can still be a good choice.

Math is a hard, abstract, mental discipline, so it’s very plausible that mere exposure to some concepts increases the subsequent understanding.

For example, I was one of the best students in class, yet it took me about a year to really get stochastic processes.

Taking advanced classes could be valuable even if you need to retake them.

Couple of points. 1) Colleges expect students to take the most advanced curriculum available. With grade inflation across the board, AP and Honors classes are not the distinguishing factor they used to be. 2) With the entire world's resources at their fingertips an ever larger cohort of kids is advancing to higher level math classes at earlier stages.

Frankly, Multivariable and Linear Alg. is on the low end of the ability of advanced high school kids these days. The ease of deploying tensor flow has gotten a lot of kids motivated to learn linear algebra.

> I think it is a joke that

Standards change greatly with time and it is a joke to believe that applying the same standards to everyone will get a good outcome.

Anecdata: I would have loved to get the possibility to study higher math at high school level, at school. I had to dig it out on my own since the local school topped out after basic calculus, linalg, statistics. I was not alone.

Today I would estimate that top 5% could easily and happily handle multivariate, ode/pde, etc in high school given proper support and encouragement.

Top few percent learn several times faster than average. What is the point, other than ancient ideology, to slow them down and hinder their learning progress?

I wish they would teach these classes with some context in high school. Rather than have a course on linear algebra, they could do something like Intro to Machine Learning or intro to writing a good physics engine, or perhaps computer graphics. Teaching linear algebra without context, especially to high schoolers, doesn't seem to be very useful, but adding in the context (at the expense of maybe depth) could be transformative.

I'll cancel your anecdote with mine.

I didn't take any advance math in HS and actually did quite average. By some miracle I was admitted a very good Electrical Engineering program. However they made me take these advance math classes before university to prove that I could handle the task.

Removing these options from HS just lowers the bar for everyone.

I wholeheartedly agree. Exceptions to the rule always exist and I don't want it to be impossible, but they should be entirely optional and non-standard. You are going to re-learn it anyway (and learn it better, from first principles instead of patched together).

It's also an arms race that's misplaced. STEM majors are learning math anyway, there really are diminishing returns in cramming more of it into your school curriculum. A lot of different subjects are way more useful, ideally some that do exactly not prepare yourself for a major of your choice, otherwise you end up with over-optimised education. You need some social studies and discuss current topics moving america and the world. You need to write essays about these difficult topics. You need a little bit of science and a little bit of history. And a foreign language. It's about the abstract ideals of education, afterwards you can choose the major you want.

I wish I had studied more math during highschool. University killed any free time I had and was so fast-paced that proofs were omitted, entire chapters skipped and I'm not even talking about building intuitive understanding of the subject.

In contrast, high school was three years of repeating the same equation solving with some calculus sprinkled on.

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