cross-posted from: https://lemmy.crimedad.work/post/56030
cross-posted from: https://pixelfed.crimedad.work/p/crimedad/664838819785277759
My five year old asked me what calceulus is.
The context is that I'm an engineer and she wanted to know what I learned in engineering school, so I said calculus. (In my case, I only made it to pre-calc in highschool.) I swear I'm not the type of parent to try and push this stuff on her. I said it's about understanding how things change and then I tried to illustrate it. I'm open to suggestions on how I could answer her better.
Depends on how smart she is I guess. It is kind of a rare thing for a 5 yo to understand graphs, I think, but maybe she can.
It might mean more to explain some of the cool things you can do with calculus (that a 5 yo would find interesting) rather than how it works.
If she seems interested in math and science stuff there's all kinds of cool things you can do with her.