History Main / CalculusIsArcaneKnowledge

[[quoteright:282:[[ComicStrip/{{Blondie}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dagwood_calculus.png]]]]

%% Image kept on page via Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1660384870089026500

Should you want to see the "math path" that leads to calculus from basic math, check out the UsefulNotes page for [[UsefulNotes/MathCurriculum Math Curriculum]].

In RealLife, calculus is the opposite of arcane in STEM; it is actually only a basic freshman-level class in most undergraduate STEM degrees. For undergraduate engineering and physics students in particular, it is the beginning of a 4 or 5-year-long journey to ''much'' more advanced mathematical concepts such as ordinary and partial differential equations, vector calculus and complex analysis, and these topics are in turn the base of branches of science such as statistics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, cosmology, chemistry and signal analysis. However, WritersCannotDoMath. Most writers are people who felt much more attracted to the warm, flexible, humane and passionate arts and humanities rather than the cold, hard, mechanical and stoic STEM. Other writers had the misfortune of having had bad math teachers who left them hating exact sciences forever, others just plain fail at handling higher mathematics. Whatever the reason, this translates to most writers having made sure to take as little math in basic school as possible. Per the standard American high school curriculum, mathematics become an optional subject around the time when calculus is taught, so for anyone who [[EveryoneHatesMathematics quit the subject at the first opportunity]], it's simply the hardest topic [[SmallReferencePools they're familiar with]].

* In the [[Manga/BlueExorcist]] fic ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/35547850 what good is a star that has lost its light?]]'', struggling with his calculus homework is the first sign that Yukio's mind [[GeniusBurnout isn't as sharp as it used to be.]]

[[UsefulNotes/{{Mathematics}} Mathematics]], and in particular calculus, is treated as arcane knowledge known only to the very smart or professional mathematicians, and opaque/useless to everyone else.

Because of this, in media works "calculus" is often used as shorthand for "brain-hurty smart people stuff." This is somewhat of an exaggeration--beginning calculus is not particularly difficult as mathematics goes, and is the foundation for much of the true higher maths and physics. And everyone's brains use the processes represented by calculus in their everyday lives (the derivative is the rate of growth or decrease, the integral is the cumulative total); what makes it difficult is substituting number-crunching for intuition. However, there are different kinds of intelligence, and mathematics that seems simple to one person can be entirely opaque to another.

!Examples:

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

* Inverted in the ''Manga/ItazuraNaKiss'' episode, ''"The Crucial Moment! Class F's Winter Battle"'', where every high school student tutored by Irie over a very short time period, even the usually dimwitted Kotoko, manages to pass their Calculus section of the college entrance exam. Everyone, save Kinnosuke, who was too proud to get tutored.

[[folder: Comics ]]

[[folder: Jokes ]]

* Joke: Two professors are arguing in a restaurant about whether calculus was obscure or well-known. The "obscure" professor went to the men's room. The "well-known" professor asks the waitress to help him play a joke on him -- when he came back, he would call her over, and ask her a question, and she should answer "one half x squared." He comes back, the professor asks him if the waitress knowing calculus would prove it, and the "obscure" professor agrees. He calls over the waitress and asks for the anti-derivative of "x". She answers, "one half x squared -- ''plus a constant.''" [[note]]That is, the "well-known" professor ''got it wrong,'' and the waitress ''corrected'' the answer he told her to give! (For those of you who have not taken calculus -- it is remarkably easy to forget the constant. Just about everyone who has has gotten back a test where all the problems lost one point for forgetting it, and it is completely plausible that the professor forgot.)[[/note]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* In Creator/DavidBrin's ''Literature/{{Uplift}}'' series practically all alien races consider any human mathematics more complex than arithmetic to be "arcane wolfling superstitions", even the Tymbrimi-created AI on the ''Streaker'' says so. Since they were all uplifted from the pre-stone age to interstellar tech by an older race they can simply use computers to brute-force any difficult mathematical problems.

* In ''Literature/{{Relativity}},'' this trope is averted: Yes, technically, Michael (college student) is helping Kelly (platonic friend, another college student) with calculus. But rather than just say "he's helping her with calculus," the narrative specifically mentions that he is helping her find the line integral of a vector field.
* Alan Sokal's famous StealthParody paper ''Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity'' makes a RunningGag about nonlinear mathematics showing the way to a new postmodern consciousness. A footnote commenting on a rather confused passage by Robert Markey incorrectly describes complex number theory as "a new and still quite speculative branch of mathematical physics," while other footnotes buffoonishly read a "pro-nuclear-energy worldview" into a book on [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon_measure Radon measures]] and liberal social attitudes into the‎ equality and choice axioms of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo-Fraenkel_set_theory Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory]].

[[folder: Live-Action Television ]]

* ''Series/TheBigBangTheory''. Four of the five main characters know advanced physics, and the math behind it. But most non-scientists on the show seem to have not even gotten to linear algebra.
** Which makes sense, since ''linear'' algebra is traditionally learned after calculus and differential equations. Calculus would be preceded by college algebra and trigonometry, commonly taught as "precalculus."

* ''Series/FamilyMatters'' also does this in one episode, where Laura complains about how difficult her calculus test was. And Urkel, of course, rants about how easy calculus is.

[[folder: Music ]]

** During Weird Al's turn as Sir UsefulNotes/IsaacNewton on ''WebVideo/EpicRapBattlesOfHistory'', he stumps Series/{{Bill Nye|TheScienceGuy}} with the question "The integral sec y dy from zero to one-sixth of pi is log to base e of the square root of three times the sixty-fourth power of [[BigWhat WHAT?]]" [[note]]The answer, it turns out, is anything that qualifies as the 64th root of 1. UsefulNotes/{{Neil deGrasse Tyson}}'s answer of choice is "i".[[/note]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]

[[folder: Theatre ]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Webcomics ]]

* In ''Webcomic/QuestionableContent'', while Raven is working out the topology of Marten's penis and jeans on the board, Faye mutters "is that calculus?"

[[folder: Web Original ]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory'', Dexter quips "this will be easier than calculus!"

* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', "The Duh-Vinci Code," Professor Farnsworth says something along the lines of, "Oooh, I'm going to go listen to that calculus lecture!"