Because it's taught in the 1st year of most math courses and most people don't take it seriously and think that it's "easy 1st year math" when its actually the

Because it's taught in the 1st year of most math courses and most people don't take it seriously and think that it's "easy 1st year math" when its actually the base for a whole lot of maths down the line. I've actually stopped asking questions about Cayley-Hamilton and Jordan form (both covered in year 1 of any decent BS math course in Europe) when I used to do inteviews for trading/quant positions because so many people failed.