[voidhorse]

Seems like a really interesting person. Off topic, but his assertions that the majority of students are “conned” into thinking math is important is strange to me. Almost everyone I know always knew they’d never need to know the Pythagorean theorem for the vast majority of life’s obstacles—they weren’t tricked into thinking it was important, they learned it because as a kid you don’t have any power and are coerced to complete certain tests to make your way along a certain circumscribed educational track.

[tuatoru]

The Pythagorean theorem is really useful for any construction. Builders use it regularly. More experienced DIYers also use it. Not a good example of rarely used schoolbook learning.

How about obscure stuff about hyperbolic trig functions (sinh, tanh and so on)?

[voidhorse]

I actually just had to use some sin/cos the other day while programming some audio stuff so there ya go. Not so useless after all.

[alanbernstein]

I remember telling a friend once in high school, that I was kind of happy to find a good real-world use for cubic polynomials. She asked what it was, so I started "well I was programming..." and she interrupted, "of course math is useful for programming, that doesn't count".