# What were the most useless skills you were taught in school? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 5, 2026, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648 "2026-06-05T19:11:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 23
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2026, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/441 "2026-06-15T13:07:10Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Well, I can imagine someone memorizing a table of logarithms. To four digits, say— that is around a thousand four-digit numbers. Then you can do cube roots, too! More useful than remembering a million digits of pi, anyways. As I’ve stated on this Board before, I knew a guy who had logarithms pretty well memorized – or he had a good intuitive feel for the plot of log(x), because he could rattle off logarithms of any number while drunk. In fact, I think he did better while drunk. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2026, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/442 "2026-06-16T19:25:38Z")
> [@abcdefghij](#): > > > [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > > > But it looks like the survey foot will [soon be a thing of the past](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/geodesy/international-foot.html). > > “soon” is [three years ago](https://www.nist.gov/pml/us-surveyfoot) From the first article: > That’s why NIST and NOAA are retiring the U.S. survey foot and standardizing on the international foot. Seriously?? However, the second link (at NIST) says that > The U.S. survey foot is obsolete. Only use for historical and legacy applications… The preferred measurement unit of length in the United States is the meter (m) and surveyors, map makers, and engineers are encouraged to adopt the SI for their work. Better, but, as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, could they not have used less equivocal language, lest a surveyor, map-maker, or engineer somewhere get the impression they can get away with _not_ using the SI for their work? No wonder the aerospace industry continues to use foot-pounds and what not (wouldn’t be surprised if some survey feet creep in there, either) ---
**Author:** ![abcdefghij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/43a26b/32.png) [@abcdefghij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abcdefghij)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2026, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/443 "2026-06-16T19:28:44Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > As the National Institute of Standards and Technology, could they not have used less equivocal language I agree, although I’ll note the end of that document has the not very equivocal > - December 31, 2022 - The last day U.S. survey foot should be used. > - January 1, 2023 - The U.S. survey foot is deemed obsolete and superseded by the international foot (also known as the foot) equal to 0.304 8 meter exactly for all applications. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2026, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/444 "2026-06-16T19:30:13Z")
So they are contradicting their own statement. Nice, precise language from a standards institute 😛 ---
**Author:** ![abcdefghij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/43a26b/32.png) [@abcdefghij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abcdefghij)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2026, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/445 "2026-06-16T19:43:42Z")
I realize that I misinterpreted your original point. I thought you were objecting to the wiggle-room left by “Only use for historical and legacy applications”. As to thinking they can “get away with _not_ using the SI for their work”, surveyors gonna survey. The NIST Metric Enforcement Shock Troops are distressingly underfunded. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2026, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/446 "2026-06-16T20:07:30Z")
I meant wiggle room to keep using non-SI, or at least non-metric, units for new work, instead of “the cable’s length, chain, fathom, furlong, league, link, rod, pole, perch, acre, and acre-foot”, as well as “the mile and square mile” (which seem _not_ to have been defined in terms of the Survey Foot!?), even though it is the NIST’s stated position that SI is the preferred system of units. I agree it is clear that no such wiggle room is envisioned for the continued use of survey units. > [@abcdefghij](#): > > As to thinking they can “get away with _not_ using the SI for their work”, surveyors gonna survey. The NIST Metric Enforcement Shock Troops are distressingly underfunded. All the current funding seems to have gone to the Shock Troops ensuring the disappearance of the Survey Foot and black-bagging old maps and measurement devices… ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2026, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/447 "2026-06-17T16:09:32Z")
The problem is entirely that NIST has no legal force. What they mean is: If we had enough law behind us that we could compel compliance from US workers and companies then that’s exactly what this paragraph would say: “Use of the survey foot is prohibited for any and all use effective 12/31/2022.” But we don’t have the legal authority to compel. Our mission is only to recommend, and hope everybody sees the wisdom in promptly and completely following our recommendations. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2026, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/448 "2026-06-17T17:35:01Z")
> [@sunacres](#): > > There must be some schools somewhere that are sensible enough to offer a math survey course for non-tech students, explaining and demonstrating what calculus is and what it does without having to master the mechanics of doing the calculations. That level of understanding would be very mind-opening for folks in general. There was actually a very effective form of this in Navy Nuclear Power School. We needed to understand the concepts, all about area under curves, slope at a point, and other calculus kinds of things in order to work with the many equations that we dealt with in thermodynamics and nuclear physics–plenty of which have things like \frac{dx}{dt} or “m” with a little dot over it like this \dot{m}, but we never actually _learned_ calculus like one would in a proper college calculus course. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2026, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/449 "2026-06-18T13:41:35Z")
Honestly, that’s the goal of any calculus course. Whenever a working physicist or engineer actually does an integral or a derivative, they’re probably just doing it numerically, by pushing a button in a computer tool. But you have to understand what an integral or a derivative is, and the best way anyone’s found for conveying that understanding is through a lot of practice on integration and differentiation problems, which involves doing a lot of integrals and derivatives. I suppose that the processes of integrals and derivatives themselves, and the symbolic representations of the functions that result from those operations, are of interest to some pure mathematicians. But only to some: That’s just one tiny, tiny slice of pure mathematics, and plenty of mathematicians build entire careers on areas of mathematics that never even touch on calculus at all. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2026, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/450 "2026-06-18T16:28:48Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Honestly, that’s the goal of any calculus course. Whenever a working physicist or engineer actually does an integral or a derivative, they’re probably just doing it numerically, by pushing a button in a computer tool. Anyone who has gone to school in the military will tell you that they have pretty much streamlined the process of getting the essentials of the necessary knowledge into the heads of the students while stripping out all of the superfluous stuff. I imagine that’s how military language courses work and how helicopter maintenance training works. In college I realized that all of the nuclear power program stuff we learned over months would have been years of college had all of the fluff been retained. Horses for courses. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2026, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/451 "2026-06-18T17:21:42Z")
Of course, military training also has the advantage that they know exactly what application their students will be using the knowledge for. With a general, broad-based training in calculus, a master of the material should be able to take a new kind of problem that they haven’t encountered before, and see how to apply calculus to it. But someone who’s been through Navy nuke school probably won’t encounter a truly novel problem like that, while operating a reactor (and if they do, there’s probably some superior with a more in-depth knowledge who can take over). ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2026, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/452 "2026-06-18T19:47:24Z")
Pretty much this. They absolutely taught for a crisp use case. Like aviation, everything was checklists and emergency procedures. And just like pilots qualifying on different aircraft, as we finished the classroom portion, they trained us on and we qualified on a specific model of reactor and power plant (of several). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648.md?page=22)