I am scared already! :eek:
But you may still get your chance to use it. I don’t think I started using the math skills I acquired in HS and college until I was ~30. Not coicidentally, this is when my career really started taking off too.
Greek. Maybe not, but Latin, sure. My wife took 4 years of latin in high school and she still gets use from it in that she can identify the latin roots of words. Still, I see your point; pretty big waste of 4 years.
I can order a pizza with anything I want on it and eat nothing but the cheese and the toppings if I choose without being bitched at. I can go to bed whenever I feel like it. If my dishes don’t get done and my house doesn’t get vacuumed, oh well. I can listen to the Carpenters all day if I want.
Oh wait. That’s not because I’m an adult, that’s mostly because I’m single.
Enough with the math already. :rolleyes:
I’ve been a critical care nurse, now a same day surgery nurse and I’ve NEVER used trig, ever. Some basic algebra, sure–no problem. I was so math stupid I never made it to calculus–I still don’t even know what it is. Hell, I could have skipped geometry for all that I got out of it (not much-- I have no understanding of the concept of 3.14 etc. Yes, I’m sure it’s quite amusing to those of you who comprehend it). I’ve never used the quadratic equation is another example. No clue what it’s used for, either. [sub]and I don’t care.[/sub] So there! 
Arithmetic is crucial. Stats is valuable. I’ve managed a household, bought said house, laid out garden beds, calculated med dosages etc all w/o trig or calc.
I get that you all like it and I agree that it all could come in useful, but I don’t need to learn it. I wish I’d learned French instead of German (although learning any foreign language helped me immeasurably in life and in my English grammar skills as well). I wish I’d had more geography and more world history and some poli sci. A micro-econ course wouldn’t have been amiss, either (although we had home ec, which covered budgeting and the like. Home ec is no longer taught in our district).
I’m all for learning just to exercise my brain etc. But I sense a waft of sanctimony re the math that irks me.
As for stuff I don’t have to do: I don’t have to suck up to my mother’s or MIL’s friends. I’m courteous, but I’m not your monkey. You want to go do X with them? Good–go have fun. Me? Not so much…
I also don’t have to like my teenagers’ music choices (and thank god for that–I don’t like what passes for music these days). And I don’t have to have any interest in my husband’s hobbies. yay!
Of course, YMMV.
I agree.
I am not particularly mathematically-minded, yet high school was all about maths, and even the examinations are weighted so that maths subjects count for more than so-called “soft” humanities ones. I was forced to sit through thousands of hours of mathematics that - looking back - was actually quite high level, and I’ve never used it. But we never studied a single Shakespeare play.
Strangely, all the maths geeks I work with seem to have to whip out a calculator to perform simple addition on a long list of numbers. I’ll do that in my head because it’s quicker than punching the keys.
I dont know why everyone is crying because you dont need to know it. I think all people should know as much knowledge as they can regardless if they need to know it or not. I mean shit i will NEVER need to know that there are 50 states in the US. I will never need to know my capital when you think about it. There are some things that you just should know as a human being and i think advance math is one of them.
I do not have to get a job I will HATE just to say I have said job. Stop pressuring me! Let me deal with the fact I just got a useless Bachelor’s degree for thousands of precious dollars and there are zero desirable jobs out there for me! I don’t want to go into sales/management/marketing, so stop fucking asking! My soul is more important than your overwrought concern. GAH!
I use algebra, geometry, and trig every single day. I’m a programmer for a mapping software company.
Ed
ivylass, can I have your cauliflower? You can have my potato chips, tuna, hot dogs, & sourdough bread!
I use them for knitting - hobby, for which I do not get paid.
It is much easier to figure out, modify, correct, and write your own patterns if you can do algebra. My button bands are evenly spaced because I do the math to evenly space them rather than kind of guessing, going by sight, and ripping out my work over and over again until they’re close enough.
Trig, every time I do any type of home decor/update project. I’m trying to hang pictures right now. Right now, I’m only at simple geometry, but it’ll get there.
I don’t have to eat fish.
It’s hard for me to imagine anyone who has grown up in the era of instant messaging not knowing how to type 
That’s not typing; that’s thumb-dancing!
If you’re an adult you can do whatever you want, as long as you accept the consequences. If “the man” tells you “Hey! don’t pet that death adder!” you go right ahead and pet it, if you want.
As far as math goes, it’s certainly useful for many things, including a lot of blue collar jobs. It’s also (IMO) interesting in it’s own right. But you can live without it. I know people who are profoundly crippled in math, who can barely add a column of numbers and don’t even know what graphing a parabola means. Yet they manage to do OK in the world.
I don’t have to get out there and relentlessly hunt down a future Mrs. Challenged. I have a happy, full social life, through with I meet a variety of interesting people, and if one of them happens to click, so be it. If not, that’s fine with me, too. So no, I don’t need to sign up for all the Internet dating sites. No, I really don’t want to be fixed up on a blind date with an aunt’s coworker who I likely have little in common with. No, I don’t need to sign up for a cooking class or a church just because you think that’s a nice place to meet girls.
OK, it was nice talking to you mom. Love you too. Buh-bye.
Who knows what profession they are going into when they are in high school? Isn’t the point of HS to give you the foundation to be able to go into anything? And how does someone know that they don’t need something if they have never even figured out what it does? That’s why I had to learn dodgeball AND poetry in HS - two subjects I really have never used again.
Quote from one of my (remedial college algebra) students: “I’m a business major, so I don’t need math”. Yeah, most of the successful business people in the world just blow off any subject that isn’t immediately useful.
And, in perhaps much the same way that learning a foreign language helps you with English, learning algebra can help you understand arithmetic, and learning calculus can help you understand algebra. In fact, learning just about anything gives you one more way of looking at things and adds to your mental toolbox.
What we all need to keep in mind in this thread is that “I don’t have to learn X” does not mean “There’s no value in learning X.”
(See how I used X there? Algebra!)
The Tech Ed kids Seriously though, who knows what profession they are going into when they are in college? I can count on one hand the number of my friends who didn’t change majors at least once or who ended up getting a job related to their major.
I happened to enjoy math but other than for personal enjoyment I haven’t found it extremely useful (although I probably do use SOHCAHTOA about once a year for not anything too important). And I did find that having studied Latin improved my vocabulary (though if I had known how much I’d be into Latinos later in life I would have studied Spanish!). But actually I haven’t found all that much that I learned in High School practically useful. I’m glad I know the stuff that interested me, but the stuff that didn’t interest me I haven’t regretted not paying much attention to. What I did find useful was working on the high school newspaper, because between that, playing around at home, and a few graphic design courses in college, I managed to learn a marketable skill.
Generally, most classes are rubbish for the workplace except lab/tech courses unless you are going into an academic field. And for that matter, what field of interest you have based on course material will not necessarily resemble what field will interest you in the workplace. Studying interesting science in a classroom is nothing like working in a lab or doing research.
The “liberal arts” aspect of school is overrated and for the most part is easily replaced by self study using the internet and Discovery/History channel. I’d like to see it replaced by a combination of the following: 1) self study on topics of interest 2) much more home ec - balancing checkbooks, responsible credit card use, cooking, nutrition, basic house handy work, savings and retirement and investment, basic car maintenence, etc 3) a series of internships at real places of business in fields of interest and 4) classes on real workplace skills - writing resume and cover letter, using excel/word/quickbooks/powerpoint, writing memos and reports, public speaking, writing grant proposals, basic management, etc.
As for the OP - no Mom, I don’t have to call you when I take a trip to let you know I’m still alive. I don’t have to answer all your nosy questions about my life. I don’t have to find your forwarded emails to be heartwarming. No friend, I don’t have to go to that thing you invited me to just because we are friends - when I do something I only invite people I think will actually also enjoy that activity and don’t expect people to show up and keep me company just because we are friends. To everyone except my boss, the police, and the government: it’s ok to make any request of me, and it’s equally ok for me to say no without having to explain. Yes, just not wanting to (or not having a strong desire to) is a good enough reason.
I used algebra while earning my art degree, most notably while dying fabrics because that involves chemistry but also in photography and printing when mixing precise proportions of chemicals.
Fractions I use in cooking all the time.
Lots of math when I was getting my pilot’s license, and that was a hobby, not something I was getting paid for.
That’s just off the top of my head, I’m sure I can come up with other examples.
Not that I’m a math whiz - I hate math and spent years in remedial math, with tutors, etc., because while parents would accept I would never get an “A” in math, they insisted I learn it anyway. And I’m glad I did.
Credit card debt. Mortgages. Investing. All aspects of personal finance. Being able to describe a financial situation with algebraic thinking is a huge advantage. It allows you to see where the main drivers are, what possible solutions are, how robust certain strategies are, the effects of unexpected factors, etc.
Many of the folks who bought houses way beyond their means could have avoided a lot of trouble if they had been mathematically sophisticated enough to understand what they were getting into.
Oh, things I don’t have to do –
I don’t have to expose acres of flesh in summertime. No, really I don’t. I don’t have to wear shorts, short skirt, sleeveless tops, or bikinis. It doesn’ t mean I’m ashamed of my body, a prude, or anything else.
Mostly, it means I don’t like getting my pale skin sunburned, I don’t like getting rashes from inadvertantly brushing up against shrubbery I’m allergic to, and I don’t like assholes commenting on my exposed flesh, either sexually or with comments like “How can you walk around with legs that white!” I’m Caucasian. Get over it.
No, I don’t have to go to church. Evar again.
Let me throw in an argument for “real life math and algebra.” Learning how to calculate interest rates, balance a checkbook, and understand stats would have been far more useful for me than four years of bewildering formulas that the instructors didn’t relate to real-life uses.