Comment by throwbadubadu

Don't need to convince me ;), but I mean this is for the very average person who argues like "why do I need more math than adding two numbers"... and even just "allow you to reason over the structure of a problem you're interested in, while throwing away all the superfluous details" and "learning to do abstractions correctly" would not seem more approachable to them than the calculus description I gave above? imo. Is there a simple real-life problem or model everyone should know or has touched in school this can relate to? I'd be curious, because as you frame it I may even need to revisit my faded memory, hm.