Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

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I got a job with a philosophy degree by sending out letters to job ads in the newspaper, back in the day when that was the done thing. I got a phone call back from someone who said "I've never met anyone with a philosophy degree - why don't you come on in to chat". So I did, and got a job at a small startup (though that trendy term hadn't been coined just yet).

I got a philosophy degree because I felt it was the only thing I could get a degree in. I'd dropped out of college because I'd failed calculus - twice - and was basically told I'd never graduate without passing calculus, and it seemed hopeless. I got coaxed back much later, and lamented to a friend during lunch about the calculus/degree situation.

"Well," he said, "you could take a logic class, but that's really hard". Umm... Really? There are classes in that? I took it. People dropped out of the class, but I'd aced it. I'd already been programming about 10 years at that point, so the principles of logic were pretty ingrained, though I didn't know all the terms. But I passed, and was encouraged to enter the philosophy program, such as it was. So I did. I did it basically because it was the only time a professor had ever shown an interest in me or my talents. So I had a philosophy degree to show for it.

"What will you do with a philosophy degree?!" was the standard reply of most of my family. "I dunno" was my standard reply. Looking back, it's apparently a standard springboard in to law, but I wasn't aware of that path either. I hated school, and was happy to be done (after a mere 6 years!), but I realized there were no "philosopher wanted" ads in the paper, which was all I knew where to look.

Tying it back to the article a bit, the 'career department' was 100% useless - they didn't even try to help, and two of the people in there said they only had time to help "real" students. Basically, if you were doing engineering, they'd place you at GM/Ford/Chrysler at the time - I'm not sure what else they did there, really.

I studied philosophy (specifically History and Philosophy of Science) because it was what I was interested in. I got my first job because I could demonstrate programming ability and because the employer saw a degree in any subject as demonstrating an ability to learn (it didn't hurt that I went to a prestigious school)

In the longer term the key things that have helped from the philosophy degree are to do with analytical and critical thinking, and the ability to write a well structured document.

> I'd dropped out of college because I'd failed calculus - twice - and was basically told I'd never graduate without passing calculus

One of the biggest pieces of BS is forcing calculus on people who have neither the need nor the desire to know calculus.

CS majors, for example, would be better served by a Discrete Math course instead of calculus: That's formal logic (first-order predicate logic, in specific) along with combinatorics and big-O notations (big-O, big-Theta, big-Omega, etc.), and some emphasis on writing proofs. If they later decide to learn calculus, they can either take freshman formula-grind calculus or Real Analysis, which is where you learn where stuff like the chain rule actually comes from by deriving calculus from first principles. Real Analysis is a lot more interesting.

Gradually getting back to my point, the focus on calculus is outdated and at odds with any STEM program that isn't exclusively or even primarily about creating civil engineers and physicists.

I've still got a chip on my shoulder about it (or, maybe... some other humiliation thing going on). From what I could tell, this was a basic general ed requirement - people getting English degrees were taking it, and passing, but somehow I could not get it. It was quite a depressing period in my life, and for the life of me I still don't understand how so many people can grasp something apparently so basic, yet I'm stymied by it. Furthermore, why is "if a=b and b=c then a=c" stye logic apparently so difficult to others; people were dropping out of logic 101 saying it was "too hard", but apparently calculus is 'easy'?

Do a Google search on 'algebra vs analysis' (without quotes) and you'll see that analysis (the broad field of mathematics where calculus lives) and algebra (the broad field of mathematics where the kind of logic you likely studied lives) are two different mindsets more than anything else. Different kinds of mathematicians are attracted to each of those fields.

This is, of course, another reason why calculus shouldn't be the barrier course (you can't graduate without it!) that it is. Some people just don't do that, and they shouldn't be penalized for it if their field doesn't require calculus (or any analysis) in the first place.

This thread is interesting: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=619519

thanks!

Calculus is used in CS--not a whole bunch but a little bit. The problem is that it's usually taught abominably. Knuth, and others, literally wrote the book on what math you need to do CS and it uses some calculus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Mathematics

I don't doubt that Real Analysis is more interesting. If only I knew from the start that upper level math was actually interesting rather than tedious. Graph theory is also loads of fun.

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