<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>gnicholas</author><text>When I was in high school, I chose to take standard-level IB math instead of higher-level IB math. The standard-level math focused on probability and combinatorics, whereas higher-level was focused on calculus (you had to take calculus first).&lt;p&gt;I appreciate the opportunity to have learned about these other subjects, which are arguably more useful in everyday life (and I went on to be a lawyer and a startup founder, where advanced calculus would not have been especially useful). It also meant my schedule was somewhat easier, since the standard-level class was not as challenging, and I was more mature by the time I took calc AB as a senior. I&amp;#x27;m glad my parents realized that getting as far down the calculus path as possible was not the only goal, and suggested this path for me.</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Math for kids outside of the Calculus Sequence</title><url>https://kidswholovemath.substack.com/p/math-for-kids-outside-of-the-calculus</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>ecshafer</author><text>Schools should honestly have two parallel tracks of math (which students should take at the same time). There should be the standard &amp;quot;analysis&amp;quot; mathematics of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus. But there should also be a track of (what I will shorthand to) Discrete mathematics, which focuses on proofs, combinatorics&amp;#x2F; probability, number theory, graphs, etc. Discrete Mathematics used to very much be a niche mathematical field, who needs to know about number theory!?  But computers has really made these other fields incredibly important to modern society. Plus writing proofs is a good exercise for anyone.</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Math for kids outside of the Calculus Sequence</title><url>https://kidswholovemath.substack.com/p/math-for-kids-outside-of-the-calculus</url></story>