two tickets to ride

 I think it's fair to say that all the bloggers at the cocktail party pretty much suck of late when it comes to regular posting. Life happens, yanno? We're doing our best. But Diandra and I did manage to carve out some time this past week for a special Cocktail Party Physics double feature diavlog on BloggingHeads.tv's Science Saturday. We chatted about NASCAR physics, of course, with a bit of Hollywood and science gossip tossed in for a hint of flavah, and griped a great deal about the sad state of science and math education. You'll also get some tidbits on my calculus-book-in-progress, Dangerous Curves: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Calculus.

I must admit that, despite my best efforts, I will never be a mathematical wizard. But hey, at least I can take a basic derivative now! And that's a lot more than I could say even two short years ago. For some insight into what worked for me in terms of getting my brain around all that math-y abstraction, check out the diavlog. And here's an amusing exchange in which Diandra expounds upon the cultural differences between physicists and NASCAR engineers. Enjoy!

Comments

[Craig]

Optimization problems are a very good way of showing the value of calculus. Least Squares curve fitting is an example of this type of problem where calculus can be applied directly even on messy real world problems. A lot of people have probably put data into excel and gotten it to give them a trend line, it might help for them to know that calculus is at the heart of that.