1. Calculus isn't required by all schools. If this is a major stumbling block and/or matter of principle for you or any other "talented people" then just gear your school search toward a school without that requirement (even several of the "top ten" schools do not require calculus, or allow calculus OR physics.)
2. One can certainly be a perfectly good architect without a working knowledge of calculus. But if you do understand it you'll have a better understanding of a variety of architecture-related subjects - such as acoustics and electricity. You'll also be able to do calculations related to these subjects more quickly - though you can certainly spend your whole career either doing this the long way, or not doing it at all and having consultants for that.
3. In my opinion part of the reason that architecture "ain't what it used to be" is because the architect's involvement in the total scope of the project has gotten much smaller - in part because architects tend to farm out much of the more technically-oriented tasks to consultants/specialists.
The math and science requirements for architecture students have been considerably lessened/dumbed down over the past 40 years - though I grant you they're more technically advanced than in Vitruvius' time, but so are the means of construction.
4. I'm not sure how you can gain a general working knowledge of structures/statics without being competent with trig - and basic physics. It's probably possible to operate as an architect without using this knowledge - but again this would entail passing much of the work out to consultants...
5. CAD doesn't think. But, if you believe that CAD can do everything mathematical/technical that may be required of you then why do you want to be an architect and not just go to a CAD program?

In my experience the point of calculus was to give me the opportunity to get one "D" in my entire college career.

I used Trigonometry today! I Totally forgot how to do everything! Had to finally resort to the web and relearn it all. Unfortunately although I could sove the problem in CAD, City hall demanded that I solve it again mathmatically so that they could confirm that the calculation was correct. What a pain! It was a calculation for the Vertical Angle of Daylight.... some crazy rule that limits the height of the building. So the moral is you will occationally use Trig and other math in Architecture. And you will look like a super star if you can just pull it off without thinking.

my school dropped the requirement for physics and math courses 2 years after i entered.

it is useful to understand the math and physics behind statics but not necessary to run an office or design a building, and frankly i wouldn't want to do the work anyway. sizing beams and columns roughly is more than enough effort, never mind calculating an entire structure. very tedious work.

on the other hand you should understand the way forces move through a building so you can have inteligent conversations with the structural engineers. if your profs can teach that then the math is not important.

see the thread on student loans, thats why we need calculus

practice roof plans? boy that made me throw up in my mouth. shut up and get your D like the rest of us, practice roof plans, har dee har har!

We used calulus in Uni for calulating heating, lighting, ventilation, rainwater disposal, structures - all without the aid of a computer or a spesialist consultant. Still useful for when the power goes down.

Also, it's not too challenging when you have qualifications in Maths and Physics to suplement the Architecture knowlege. As far as trig goes and drafting principals - AutoCAD has taken that knowlege away. If you don't have a computer to hand and you don't know your geometry your up shit creek. I'm sure Vitruvious had a knowlege of geometry and maths.

The argument related to the fact that many students can even do simple maths calculations without the aid of a calculator. I'm sure we have discussed this before here although it may have been in the old Archinect.

I enjoyed calculus

and me!

Doing simple math is one thing, we all need that. Even trig can help, but I've never used it nor do I know anyone that has.

It's a waste of time for an architect to even bother considering doing anything more than basica calcs (like adding/sub). I don't care if you got an A+ in calc 5, I would not trust an architect's calculations - they just don't do it enough.
Not to mention, I don't think grades are really indicative of what someone actually knows (I got As in both pre and calc and don't remember one single thing, really, not one).

It's not that you'll use calculus much, or at all, as an archt. But by studying that & similar courses, you'll develop better reasoning & logic.
Calculus is there to help get you in a mindset of step-by-step, analytical thinking. It ain't really there so you'll know how much area, or volume is under the profile of your building section. basically, it just teaches thinking.

Now what calculus does to your ability to perform simple math...that's another story.

i liked calc too... and though yes... the structures classes we have to take are a pain and difficult... i am so much more comfortable talking about structure now... speaking with my engineering friends i am now able to understand most of the underlying context for often times complex problems in structures.

plus calc is fun
but trig would be more applicable i think...
but i took that in hike school
so i was ok
actually i took calc in hike school too...
which is why I got an "A" in calc... HA

i find myself using trig functions on a fairly regular basis, though i usually have to reinvent how to use them for myself because i can't remember how to use them efficiently.

calc: though i took it, i'm not sure i even still remember what it was about...

I think the purpose of Calculus as a requirement has less to do with the direct application of caclusus to what an architect does, and more about going through a course of study that pushes you to undertake complex problem solving tasks. The steps to learn calculus help you better tackle other problem solving tasks.

And, I do recall using calulus in some of my structures courses, so it did directly help better understand the conditions of architecture.

dont you think sometimes things can be helpful to education even if there is no obvious application?

Calculus is probably one of the most interesting and enjoyable subjects to ever study. I took two semesters in my high school, ran out of math courses in my senior year, so took the third semester at a local community college and differential equations my final semester in high school.
My first semester at Berkeley I took the calculus course that they require for non-engineering majors - what a joke. I had to convince the Architecture advisors to let me take the two semesters of Calculus for engineers. Thank god - those at least didn't insult people's intelligence. I think one of the best professors I ever had a Berkeley was my Calc IA prof.
I don't really understand why architects hate Calculus. It is theoretical, logical, and totally conceptual - three requirements for good architectural design.
I actually think architects would get much much more respect if they understood basic physics, math, and mechanics of materials.
I hope I am not offending anyone, but from my experience, the courses I took while completing my structural engineering minor gave me a much richer understanding of the materials I have to work with as an architect.
Just to end on a more positive note: my high school Calculus teacher was a retired physicist. He said it took him repeating the same Calculus courses three times to get to the point where he fully appreciated and understood the material. The subject is dense and weighty, but once you understand it, it's beautiful.

why take history?
why take biology?
why take economics?
why take literature?
why take psychology?
why take philosophy?
why take music?
why take geography?

t_o_r, you don't even have a rudimentary knowledge of vitruvius. did he not insist that an architect be a well-rounded person, a generalist, someone who had knowledge of many fields?

i remember being around people like you in school. "how is [insert non-design-studio class here] gonna make me a better architect?" they'd cheat on math and science courses, do each other's homework, skip class, all that.

i graduated in 2001. last time i checked, none of the people who i remember saying those things can legally call themselves architects.

i can.

I think calculus is one of the most excting and challenging classes I took in college. I dont know what it has to do with our modern practice of architecture, but I think it helps you se space even more abstractly.

In caluculus you are basically mapping lines, planes, points in space. I think that it is facinating.

I actually hated Physics more. But I think it is becuase I took it during 9/11 and at that time I wasn't in the mood for moving trains traveling at 30mph with this much friction, and that much blah blah blah....

calculus is the only math that can describe change over time; all math leading up to it is just a static represention.
i like not being afraid of integrals when i see them.

agreed or not being afraid of an integral when one sees them! at least when someone goes on a rant about mathmatics, you can at least try to hang in a conversation.

my undegrad recently took calc out of the curric and replaced it with pre-calc...which is too bad IMO. Calculus is spatial, and even if you can't remember any specifics, surely it allows one to abstractly visualize and quantify space...

calculus is amazing - maybe you're missing some of the cooler aspects.

if you have a rate of change that is constant - that graph will be a straight line, or a degree 1 curve.

should that rate of change accelerate, the result is a curve. degree x

these curves are STRICTLY mapped - what do you think is making those splines in Maya (for example, have you tried to drive the animation your objects using the graph editor?)

or what about a procedure to rationalize warped surfaces :
calculus will infinitely analyze the curve to 0, and therefore give a sigma of all segments. Segments can therefore be tabulated such that you can break it down to any finite number. How superheavy is that?

strangely, snowi, i understood everything you said. maybe i've just internalized the calculus i learned so many years ago without realizing it. or maybe an awareness of these relationships just comes over time and experience - at least in a superficial way.

yes. Internalized Calculus 101, coming soon to a University near you.

i think there's a market for it. maybe even distance learning. how much do you think i could charge if i decided to start a program?

at least exp{ (-t^2)/2 }
G(t) = ----------------
sqrt(2pi)

oops...I meant


G(t) = exp{ (-t^2)/2 } / sqrt(2pi)

AP-

bad formatting, you have a square root in the denominator of your function... (and i'm assuming you actually mean -(t^2) and not (-t)^2

g(t)=[e^(-t^2) * sqrt(2*pi)] / (2*pi)

much better... now lets do the first derivitive of that...

oh and { } are used for sets, not order of operations... though i used [ ] which should be used for matrices. oops.

A friend of mine recently told me that grad schools don't actually follow-up on the calc requirement at all. they say you need it but accept you even if you haven't done it. Anyone else experienced this one way or the other?

ap and acfa - see, you're not internalizing. i don't know what any of that means. it's too overt. c'mon get with the spirit of the thing!

and, acfa, derivitive is 'derivative'. (i'm better at spelling.)

graphed...

steven-

interestingly enough, i did much better on the verbal part of the gre than the math... so much for standardized testing. i'm just a dum-dum either way.

I think calculus is one of the most important requirements for architecture students.

I-way ish-way I-way ould-cay under-way and-stay at-whay ose-thay uys-gay are-way alking-tay about-way ith-way eir-thay ancy-fay equations-way and-way aphs-gray.

'see the thread on student loans, thats why we need calculus'

touche 'upside down'

option b: get a dual degree in business

i love calculus and am kinda bummed that i don't get to do it anymore. this feels like ancient history for me now but i recall in high school that although i was good at geometry, i struggled with algebra until i got to calculus, which seemed to beautifully tie everything together. for me, the abstractions of numbers suddenly made much more sense when combined with the visual representations of calc.

of course, i then went to university and majored in electrical engineering for my first three years and i have to admit that once i got past calc, i found things to be pretty tedious. too much dealing with differential equations, matrix algebra, and complex numbers. it was unbelievable at times, i'd have entire sheets of paper used on a single problem and sometimes there wouldn't even be any numbers.

why study this stuff? i can think of two reasons. one, i had a professor who said that differential equations were very sophisticated stuff. that statement has stuck with me and i would compare it to being able to speak a foreign language, or play a musical instrument. both things that i can't do and part of the reason that i still feel like a cultural infidel despite having two college degrees.

the second reason to study math would be because complex math actually gets very creative. the best mathematicians actually move beyond existing knowledge and are able to articulate their understanding of phenomena by inventing new forms of representation. in short, they create new branches of math. that's basically what leibniz and newton both did when created calculus a few centuries back. they were able to percieve that there was not only a change in position by a falling apple, but also a change in the rate of change of that falling apple, i.e., acceleration. and they were able to master an understanding of these relationships by placing them in them in terms of math. this allowed them to relate their understanding to others, who were then able to send people to the moon, amonst other things. very impressive. and we think we're being creative when we place a window on an angle...hmm.

Stephen, mine was at least partially internalized in its mis-re-representation, no?

if only there were a way to map the trajectory that these threads take over the course of hours/days, especially after they're derailed > now that would be interesting.

Yes, Steven, THAT would be very cool!

liberty-

x is number of posts, f(x) is the measure of how far off topic the post is...

that would be...
f(x)=sin(2x)*2x

Can you add in multi-directional meanderings from both the main topic and the initial derailment(s)?

Beautiful work, ACfA.

except any topic created by Per Corell is asymptotically convergent at infinity..

here is the process pointed out by expert architects. everything else is incomplete.

i'll never be an expert architect....
my urge is to pull the finger on the left.

is that max fischer's solution of the riemann hypothesis from 'rushmore?'

thats a part of a load calculation on an excentricly loaded steel beam.
why wouldn't you want to become an expert in your field, if you are bragging about it around here. i don't believe you.. don't lose your valuable time to denial theories. dear abra..

An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of knowledge, technique, skill and talent. Experts have prolonged or intense experience through practice and education in a particular field.

The opposite of an expert is generally known as a layperson, while someone who occupies a middle grade of understanding is generally known as a technician and often employed to assist experts.

Rhino users can play with this ... if of course you understand parametric equations. Sorry, t_o_r

42

that's the answer to many a question -- as is "k".

"Experts have prolonged or intense experience through practice and education in a particular field."

Like I said, my urge is to pull the finger on the left.

Now where did I leave my towel....