Calculus

I may not be a smart man, but I know what calculus is (in the Forrest Gump accent).

Well, that last sentence is a lie, but I did have some calc classes back in my day. In fact, I was the the advanced math classes from the 8th grade on through high school. Math analysis, precalc, and calc in high school and Calc 1 and 2 plus statistics in college. I never really considered myself good at the subject of math, but I did fairly well, As and Bs, in each class.

I am telling you this to demonstrate the point that people can do very well in life without really knowing what is going on. I never understood calculus while I was taking it, by that I mean deep down in the brain understanding and why we were doing what we were doing. I could do the formulas, solve for x or whatever, and get the correct answers, but I guess I never even thought about why or how it could be used. And so it went like this until calculus was a distant memory. Newton turned in his grave.

One day up in Seneca Falls I was lying around on the couch in the middle of summer. Our lack of air conditioning and an upstairs apartment forced me to be half naked and miserable. I was watching a show on Animal Planet about Pandas and it hit me...the reason calculus makes sense. I was like ohhhh...OHHHHH....its all about coordinates and how a point would move in one vector in comparison to a different vector. Calculus is the math of motion. I don't know why it came to me then, but it seemed like years of math classes were made clear.

This catharsis never had any further implications to my life, I never got out an old math book and did problems or anything like that, but it is nice to know. Newton, you may rest peacefully once again.