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I'm not saying the terminology is wrong or anything like that. I'm just saying 'deceleration' is a more concise and comprehensible way of talking about changes in the second derivative. You might be surprised how little high school calculus most people have retained.

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Or how little high school calculus people have taken. At my high school not even precalculus was a requirement. Of a graduating class of around 300, I'd say 30-45 students had taken a calculus course.

I agree that acceleration would be a much clearer term.

I understood what people meant by "the second derivative" before I'd taken any calculus. It's intuitive; you hear it in context once and you get it.

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