> Were they trying to prepare you for a world without paper or computers Yes, most high schools spend a few months teaching “trigonometry” as a system for simp

> Were they trying to prepare you for a world without paper or computers Yes, most high schools spend a few months teaching “trigonometry” as a system for simplifying formulas that was primarily useful historically to save time for human calculators working with pen/paper and a printed lookup table. In the modern world this is entirely anachronistic and the content could be profitably compressed down to a couple weeks, with the saved time spent on something else. The main remaining utility is as rather cumbersome, unpleasant, and unenlightening algebra practice.