Math that Matters: The Case for Probability over Polynomials
8th March 2025
When I was in high school, students divided into two camps: those who “got” math and those who believed they simply weren’t “math people.”
I was one of the “got” math people who spent countless hours doing trigonometry and eventually doing AP Calculus where I was doing derivatives and all sorts of ‘fancy’ math. Deep down, I knew what this was really about – it wasn’t about practical skills but about signaling I was smart, just like the other high-achiever types. It wasn’t about learning. It was just another credential for the college application rat race.
Meanwhile, some of my friends struggled with math not because they lacked ability, but because the content was so disconnected from anything they cared about. When any of us asked the teacher when we’d ever use this stuff, she gave the standard response about college preparation and developing abstract thinking skills.
But looking back now, I realize we were all learning the wrong math – both the students who excelled and those who gave up. It is yet another example of how schools fail teenagers.
The math most useful in real life isn’t calculus or advanced trigonometry – it’s probability and statistics. And yet our education system treats these subjects as afterthoughts, typically confined to a single elective course typically in senior year, if taught at all.
This is backwards.
Exactly so. I suspect that this is reflective of the modern attitude of “everyone must go to colleege”, so by God they’re going to try to prepare for college whether you need it or not, and to Hell with stuff that might be practical for non-college people.