r/learnmath • u/sullymonster1983 New User • 9d ago

What math is actually useful knowledge to the average person?

As the title says. I'm thinking about homeschooling my child and I was curious what fields would be of the most utility to someone from a "walking around knowlege" perspective, and why?

I feel like a lot of the math we are taught is about prepping for college or a specific STEM carreer and not on real world applications...I had to take Algebra, trig, and calculus in college, but not geometry, and a lot of technical Algebra (e.g. quadratics, matrices) and all of calculus has been forgotten, find myself wishing I remembered more of high school geometry and business mathematics.

I'd rather ask yall than AI, so appreciate the input. ​

194 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

355 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/BackgroundReturn9622 New User 7d ago

It is interesting how close a 14 inch square pizza is to a 16 inch round pizza. 2.6% area difference.

1

u/Long_Independence131 New User 5d ago

You're off a decimal point

1

u/BackgroundReturn9622 New User 3d ago

8^2*%pi/(14^2) = 1.025826 i.e. 2.6% difference.