@r @ireneista @MaddieM4

discrete math was taught in the CS department, by the professor who also taught Haskell lol. (he, uh, wasn't a great teacher. didn't really meet the students where they were at or check that they really understood. yay for perpetuating Haskell's elitist reputation...)

but i'm not sure, i don't know the history of why discrete math is so rare. it's not exactly rare in pure math research either, is it? but it probably gets less attention on its own, and its biggest success, graph theory, is seen as its own thing.

i made a language based on hereditarily finite sets, for if i ever feel the need to explain set theory again haha

https://blog.veritates.love/hatstack

@r @ireneista @MaddieM4

yeah, I could imagine it's like that at other places. I went to a small liberal arts college (Bard College), and professors were given a lot of latitude and trust to teach even core courses their way, I think, even if general requirements are agreed upon.

there are some interesting courses for non-majors. I can find “Mathematics and Politics” and “Games of Chance” listed. Lauren Rose focuses on games/puzzles, stuff like Rubiks cubes and Set and generalizations.

sometimes the courses for non-majors are one-offs. I think there was a more conceptual course taught one semester, focusing on the larger picture like what are proofs and why do we care. I don't know any details or how it did.

but I agree. The Beauty and Joy of Mathematics needs to be a standard course

@r @ireneista @MaddieM4 @mcc @decay @amarioguy

yeah, i ended up having a lot of pre-calc students drop into tutoring hours in college, and i could see how it was stuff you needed to know for calculus (maybe they did a bit better job of that),

but a lot of students were just taking it as a sole math requirement, the last math class they'll ever take, either because they didn't place into calculus or didn't want to take calculus ... and it really was not a good fit for that purpose. i felt sorry for those students.