By David Bressoud @dbressoud

As of 2024, new Launchings columns appear on the third Tuesday of the month.

This is a continuation of the Launchings columns that will take us up to the current efforts to modernize undergraduate mathematics. Last month I took us as far as what many considered to be the demise of Calculus Reform. As I said, that assessment was far too pessimistic. This month I will look at the long-term effects that were launched in the ’90s.

One of the greatest successes of Calculus Reform was the adoption of the “Rule of Three.” Among the shortcomings of calculus instruction in the 1980s was the dominance of functions as algebraic expressions. As I saw for myself in interviewing students, calculus was often remembered as a set of arcane rules for turning one algebraic expression into a different one. As one student told me, differentiation is about turning a function into a simpler one and integration is about reversing that process. After two years of calculus, that was all he retained.…