> Most adults retain barely any of their high school or college math, including people in STEM occupations. I've heard "I'm not really a math person" from engineers.
I studied computer and electrical engineering, so we had tons of math heavy physics and math in there.
But since university, I haven’t done anything beyond algebra and statistics. Not for an hour.
And if I were say a product manager, would I have done any algebra since university?
Adults don’t retain math as very few use it with any regularity, and certainly not without calculators.
Same thing happens with literacy. Professions that don’t use reading/writing regularly see the skills of people employed in those roles atrophy.
C. 1995, I aced the SAT-I math section (/800) cold with zero prep at a time when I was taking AP Calculus BC (5.0/5.0 on that too). BS CS/EE but stopped there because there wasn't really any benefit going on. If a gun were put to my head, I'd like to think I would be able to reteach myself how to derive the time-dependent hydrogen 1s PDF. I don't know the last time I used an integral or manipulated a PDE, but have had to use vectors and kernels now and then. I'm lazy, so I would probably use Mathematica or Giac if anything hurt my brain and couldn't be entered easily on an HP 48 (emulator).
I'm kind of annoyed when people without degrees and with liberal arts majors are making $400k-$1M in the same job I'm in (when employed), and annoyed at myself for bothering pay the establishment years and $70k for nothing of value.
I studied computer and electrical engineering, so we had tons of math heavy physics and math in there.
But since university, I haven’t done anything beyond algebra and statistics. Not for an hour.
And if I were say a product manager, would I have done any algebra since university?
Adults don’t retain math as very few use it with any regularity, and certainly not without calculators.
Same thing happens with literacy. Professions that don’t use reading/writing regularly see the skills of people employed in those roles atrophy.
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5873757