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I can't believe I'm reading someone on hacker news saying 'polynomials don't appear in everyday problems.' Name a situation where solving a polynomial is somet

• Someone 13y ago
  That's not a polynomial, but an exponential, discretized (x^2 is a polynomial, 2^x an exponential) In everyday life, I would guess most polynomials you encounter are of order zero or one. Most people would not call those polynomials. Second order ones you encounter when doing quick math for computing how hard an impact will be, or how far a car accelerating from zero to X in T seconds will go.
• gshubert17 13y ago
  Problems involving projectile motion involve quadratics, s = vt + 0.5g*t^2 The average person may not be called on to solve it analytically, but should have a general understanding of function, solution, and so on. Having worked through some example polynomials may make retaining the general concepts easier.
• smsm42 13y ago
  As noted, compound interest is exponential, not polynomial. Which brings me to one of my favorite pet peeves - I don't think schools still have any basics of financial literacy - like understanding how compound interests work, what present value and net present value is, how to estimate value a cash flow, etc. And those are things which you can encounter every day - taking a loan, negotiating a raise, figuring out if you can afford a new car, etc. Much more useful than knowing how exactly crystals which 99.999% would never see in their life are built.