Is the mathematics you learn in school really needed in everyday life?

BRAVO agreed!!!

Just learning Excel has been a massive help in nearly every job I have ever done. It makes complicated maths easier and replicable. It is practical algebra that serves a purpose other than find x because that is what the question wants.

Of course an understanding of limitation is required but more often than not I find the only real limitation is my own understanding. The tool is only ever as good as the user.

The world of games related maths can get very deep and spans a huge range of genres. So while I focused on RPG elements you could do the same for economy mechanics which many games have. I can think of few that work by abusing integer limits causing overflow. Combining maths and coding, which is basically maths and logic puzzles.

I'm still learning Excel too but I'm always surprised how much mathematics you can do with it. I still remember the day a colleague of mine showed me how to do nonlinear curve fitting with the solver!

I also find that if I can put together a calculation in Excel it's much easier to explain to someone else, especially if they find maths a little challenging.

That is interesting. Day to day life has taught you logic which has in turn taught you mathematics? Has that been other people's experience?

Does that mean that we should include more logic in the way we teach mathematics at school?

What topics do you mean by "everyday maths"?

Gcse maths was fun and I enjoyed the stuff we learnt. However, a lot of things are irrelevant to what we need in actual life and so ppl who struggled with maths disliked it and weren’t great at it. I believe there should be 2 math qualifications. One that is like gcse maths and another that is more general by having multiplication money and stuff to do with every day life.

I don't understand this question because it implies that everything else you learn in school at that level is 'useful'. Why is maths always the target? It's not like I use my knowledge of GCSE English language poetry every day or at all.

I don't think you can ever stop learning Excel, I'm sure your application is completely different to mine. It is an incredibly versatile tool that can serve so many different needs. I use it building property databases calculating utilisation rates which then translates through mail merge into presentable data sheets per property.

I have a soft spot for a perfect conditional formatting, Such as this conversion of numerical to alphabetical data;



Excel is a useful tool for breaking down equations allowing you to use variable inputs on the same equations.

I don't understand this question because it implies that everything else you learn in school at that level is 'useful'. Why is maths always the target? It's not like I use my knowledge of GCSE English language poetry every day or at all.

I think that is part of the question I'm asking this forum.

I'd define everyday maths as the mathematics you need to get you through a day, to shop certainly, but also to plan a trip or buy a car or a house, to read or hear the news and make sense of the numbers that are presented, to listen to what a politician says and decide for myself if what they are saying makes sense or not, to go online and at least have some idea about the data I'm creating and who is making use of it and what algorithms it is being put through.

I'd really like to know what other people think though.

I think there is a huge misconception amongst non-mathematicians that maths is about arithmetic, calculations and adding things up.

Person: Hi, what are you studying?
Mathematician: I do maths.
Person: Quick! What's 45924+19393?
Mathematician: I don't know. Let me get my calculator.

Maths fundamentally isn't about arithmetic or even numbers - it's about understanding. The maths content in GCSE Maths is generally more than enough for the average person not working in STEM to go about their everyday life. It's not even particularly important to be able to add up three-digit numbers because we have calculators for that.

Most maths qualifications beyond GCSE are preparation for a university course or career in a maths or science field, where the maths content learned has extremely important applications such as calculus in science and engineering. Number theory is a very pure branch of maths, but were it not for the fact that it's difficult to find the prime factors of large numbers, our modern security system wouldn't exist today.

Even if you aren't working in a technical field, the analytical skills and problem-solving skills gained from studying maths are still really important. In maths if you want to claim a statement is true, you actually have to logically prove it; you can't just throw around a couple of examples and say it's true, so this teaches people how to formulate logical arguments which is also very useful.

Hi, Those are some great videos, and I wish I had the teacher's enthusiasm! I do wonder if to really appreciate how amazing those proofs are you need to have seen things done a different way first though. What do you think?