I wonder if one of the reasons they switched banking from being locally run by a bank manager to being ruled at a distance by tick-boxers in "head office" was because they stopped teaching compound interest to schoolkids, which eventually meant that only PhDs could understand the arithmetic of lending money.
I get the impression that the maths syllabus has broadened out enormously and begun to incorporate more sophisticated applied maths (which in my day and within my region was a separate subject anyway) along with statistics and abstract algebra so it seems rather than spreading everything thinly they've given students the opportunity to 'specialise' - I'd be very surprised if a significant number of A-level students aren't doing calculus (and compound interest was never that tricky - some will just never want to know).
Who but a fool would attempt A-level physics without also studying A-level maths. Unless things have changed a lot since I did A-levels, not only did maths and physics help each other (they covered some common ground but had different approaches) but I cannot imagine how anyone would manage a university 'physical sciences' degree without A-level maths.
I hadn't realised that - how bizarre. Maybe these days they know a bit less about a bit more. But it would certainly seem to put the nonsense about perpetually improving standards into some sort of perspective.
Calculus wasn't included in 'O'-level Maths either, not when I did in around
1980 anyway.It was included in Additional Maths 'O'-level, and ISTR that to do Physics A-level you needed either Additional Maths O-level or to be studying Maths A-level.
Simple straightforward differentiation and integration were definitely in the NUJMB syllabus in 1978.
I did Additional Maths as well, and there was calculus in that, but from what I remember the Additional stuff was mostly `more interesting stuff to do with the same techniques' than `new techniques'.
Was that "more (interesting stuff)" or "(more interesting) stuff"? :-)
In the 1960s not only basic integration and differentiation, but being able to derive the methods from first principles, was a standard part of the Scottish Lowers, generally then regarded as equivalent to English O levels, (Highers were lower than English A levels, being just one year past Lowers). And not only compound interest, but being able to derive the formulae from first principles, was also part of Lower Maths.
I did Oxford (I think), and there was definitely no calculus. If there'd been questions about integration and differentiation in my O-Level Maths I'd have assumed they'd given me the sociology paper by mistake.
Additional Maths was basically calculus. I remember the first thing we did was plot a graph of y=x^2 and work out the gradient at various points.
"Sam Nelson" wrote
... and also after 1980.
I seem to remember learning compound interest at Junior School ...
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