The laws of nature that physicists actually use, however, are written in the language of Calculus. And understanding the laws in Calculus form is ridiculously useful.
Not compared with stats and other discrete maths. I studied calculus at college and university - and it was definitely one of the more useless things I learned. It's main use has been teaching it to other people so they can get through their own calculus maths exams.
This guy says that the problem is that high-school math education is structured to prepare people to learn calculus in their freshman year of college. But only a small minority of students ever takes calculus, and an even smaller minority ever uses it. And not many people ever make much use of pre-calc subjects like algebra, trig, or analytic geometry.
Instead, high-school math should be structured to prepare people to learn statistics. Probability and basic statistics, he argues, are not only more generally useful than calculus, they are also more fun.
I have to agree with him. What do the people here think?