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Medical professionals (nurses, pharmacy techs, etc.) and tradesmen (welders, electricians, mechanics, etc.) come to mind as two groups of people for whom baseli

Medical professionals (nurses, pharmacy techs, etc.) and tradesmen (welders, electricians, mechanics, etc.) come to mind as two groups of people for whom baseline scientific knowledge is important to even get started. Compare this to trig, which I've literally never seen used outside of a math class. Basic science is important so people have the foundation to access more complex science.

nitrogen 5y ago
Welders/fabricators and machinists use trig to set up accurate angles. In general, if one has never seen something from middle/high school math used, one isn't looking very hard. See these videos for examples: Sine bar (This Old Tony): https://youtu.be/PO-Ab7YfBzY https://youtu.be/PO-Ab7YfBzY Compound slide tricks (Blondiehacks): https://youtu.be/6AQzDVic-hk https://youtu.be/6AQzDVic-hk
__s 5y ago
Trig is useful to at least know the unit circle for sin/cos/tan: http://crystalclearmaths.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Unit-Circle.jpg http://crystalclearmaths.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Unit... (Amusingly I had to learn about this outside of class, but it carried me through) Trig isn't so useful if you can measure everything, & I've made the mistake of using trig to skip measuring only to find that nothing's built straight. But it helps to ball park Once was sitting on the edge of a river with my father & he raised the question of how wide the river was. A quick estimate was possible: stand straight across from a landmark point, then measure walking along the river for some distance. Measure the angle towards that previous landmark. Multiply traveled length by tan(angle). A particularly nice angle is 45 degrees, which requires very little math since tan(45) = 1 & 45 is an easy angle to eye ball
metaphor 5y ago
> Compare this to trig, which I've literally never seen used outside of a math class. I suppose that's an indirect admission that you weren't an EE major.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
How much does the basic science end up directly used in the careers of the medical professionals? My understanding is that much of the training is preparation for med school, but the underlying concepts more or less aren't used at all while on the job (except for pharmacists and biochemistry)

nitrogen 5y ago

Welders/fabricators and machinists use trig to set up accurate angles. In general, if one has never seen something from middle/high school math used, one isn't looking very hard. See these videos for examples: Sine bar (This Old Tony): https://youtu.be/PO-Ab7YfBzY https://youtu.be/PO-Ab7YfBzY Compound slide tricks (Blondiehacks): https://youtu.be/6AQzDVic-hk https://youtu.be/6AQzDVic-hk

__s 5y ago

Trig is useful to at least know the unit circle for sin/cos/tan: http://crystalclearmaths.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Unit-Circle.jpg http://crystalclearmaths.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Unit... (Amusingly I had to learn about this outside of class, but it carried me through) Trig isn't so useful if you can measure everything, & I've made the mistake of using trig to skip measuring only to find that nothing's built straight. But it helps to ball park Once was sitting on the edge of a river with my father & he raised the question of how wide the river was. A quick estimate was possible: stand straight across from a landmark point, then measure walking along the river for some distance. Measure the angle towards that previous landmark. Multiply traveled length by tan(angle). A particularly nice angle is 45 degrees, which requires very little math since tan(45) = 1 & 45 is an easy angle to eye ball

metaphor 5y ago

> Compare this to trig, which I've literally never seen used outside of a math class. I suppose that's an indirect admission that you weren't an EE major.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

How much does the basic science end up directly used in the careers of the medical professionals? My understanding is that much of the training is preparation for med school, but the underlying concepts more or less aren't used at all while on the job (except for pharmacists and biochemistry)