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I have a friend who has been a high school math teacher for 15 years. When she started, she asked me and the rest of our friends to make note of any times we us
by smeej 3y ago
I have a friend who has been a high school math teacher for 15 years. When she started, she asked me and the rest of our friends to make note of any times we use algebra or more advanced high school math in our daily lives.
Both times it has happened, I've been sure to let her know.
Once, the Pythagorean theorem helped me figure out how long the sides of square table decorations needed to be for my sister's wedding if they were to be inset in round tables with 5-foot diameter.
The other time, I was able to prove, conclusively, that I could not possibly have been speeding before another driver caused an accident, but none of the police officers could follow the math, and since I wasn't a "certified accident reconstruction expert," they wouldn't believe me anyway. (Hiring one would have been more than the repair cost.)
It didn't go over well when I told the supervising officer that just because he couldn't do the math, it didn't mean it couldn't be done, even by some dork who had a liberal arts degree but had, in fact, studied calculus in high school.
- j45 3y agoOne thing that stood out in university was learning the algebra version to so many basic math formulas in any field, whether it might be physics, math, biology, chemistry, or most anything. As for your use case, sometimes, some people are hired to not understand things.
- hutzlibu 3y ago"The other time, I was able to prove, conclusively, that I could not possibly have been speeding before another driver caused an accident" Can you share that proof?
- smeej 3y agoI don't still have it. It was years ago. I had the accident record pulled from the vehicular equivalent of my car's black box that said how fast I was going at impact. The distances involved made it such that I could not have braked to that speed from a higher speed than the speed limit in the required space.