What type of math should the next gen of coders be learning in school?

Question

In college admissions, I see evidence that AP Calculus is essentially a lazy proxy for "does the kid have some thinking ability" even when the student is applying for a course that uses calculus very lightly, if at all.Recent grads I know spent their time wrangling matrices, thinking in hex and traversing graphs. Honestly it all looks very much as if the infamous New Math from the 1960s would have been a better grounding than calculus.Don't get me wrong, calc is awesome. But maybe middle and high schoolers need stronger linear algebra to be better coders. Thoughts?

SamReidHughes · Accepted Answer

Taking linear algebra beyond what is already covered in high school is not as useful or essential as material about logarithms, infinite series, and trigonometry. I think the curriculum is pretty good -- maybe it's a bit too interested in conic sections.

trinovantes · Answer

You're going to need calculus if you want to work with PID control systems or audio/signal processing

inphovore · Answer

Statistics.Modern AI is automated statistics.A sound understanding of statistics will also help them comprehend economics, finance, political science, and have a better chance of bullshit detection.