School spends a long time “wasting” our time but learning things is a great way to learn how to interpret information and make actual informed decisions
School spends a long time “wasting” our time but learning things is a great way to learn how to interpret information and make actual informed decisions
Also sometimes it actually just is good to know maths. Engineers, researchers, actuaries, accountants…there’s a huge range of practical applications for maths that’s more complicated than basic arithmetic in a very direct fashion, before you even get into jobs that more indirectly use abstract reasoning learnt through high school maths.
Sure. And for the 90% of kids who correctly say they won’t use math, it doesn’t matter. We are doing math so they can learn to navigate formal systems of reasoning. We could honestly teach deductive logic instead, or set theory, or group theory, or finite field topology. It doesn’t have to be algebra or anything remotely practical.
All of these are maths, though?
Abstract versus applied math. It looks different. More like studying numberless patterns and proof methods.