"When Will I Ever Use This?"

I hear this question from students from time to time, usually when I’m teaching them how to convert an angle measurement from degrees to radians by looking at the unit circle or something of that sort. They want me to explain to them how, in the “real world” in adulthood, they will use the specific bit of information I am trying to force into their mind. It’s a fair question, and since I’m not their parent, I can’t use an adage of “because I said you need to learn it.”

I remember having the same issue when I was in my schools in the Navy. The reactor plant that we learned about in Nuclear Power School was the “S5W” plant. After learning all about it, we found out that this plant had not been in active Navy ships for years. Most of us in my class went to ships that have the “S8G” plant. As you might imagine, we were disappointed that we had spent so much time and effort learning about a power plant we would never see again. We realized that Power School wasn’t really about the specific knowledge we gained (although we did have to learn all about the specifics of that plant). The point of Power School and the next school, Prototype, was to teach us how to learn about these plants. It didn’t matter that the power plants were different. The point was to learn how to learn them.

The same is true for my students who are studying for the SAT, ACT, or their next geometry test. There is but a minuscule chance that you will need to know the Unit Circle or how to calculate the area under a curve on the x-y coordinate plane in “real life.” But the logic and problem-solving skills that are required to do those tasks will be useful in almost every aspect of your life, whether it involves numbers or not. The point is not that you need to know that specific information later in life. The point is that you need to know how to learn new things and how to figure things out.

Math gives you some information and asks for an answer. If you can use the information you have and find a path to the information you need, then you can figure out anything that’s thrown at you in life. That might be a bold statement, but it pretty much works like that.