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Quadratic equations and other useful stuff

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Ok so I'm not a pensioner yet, but since leaving school I have never in my working life had to use quadratic equations. So I wonder why at school it was something that in maths I was told I must know.
How many things did we HAVE to learn at school that in real life we never use?
Quote by Tanis105
Ok so I'm not a pensioner yet, but since leaving school I have never in my working life had to use quadratic equations. So I wonder why at school it was something that in maths I was told I must know.
How many things did we HAVE to learn at school that in real life we never use?

Shitloads, but someone in your class might have needed them for whatever they decided to do. You might have learned something very useful to you, but that same information/fact might never be used again by others.
PS I was good at quadratic equations.
Quote by freckledbird
PS I was good at quadratic equations.

That the annoying thing by the time I left I was good at them as well.
But can anyone (not in teaching) say they have used them since?
Quote by freckledbird
PS I was good at quadratic equations.
:giggle: :giggle: unfortunately so was I.
How to dissect a bulls eye....yuck give me a clue lol
sex ed...........now why would I want to know about that...ffs when am I ever going to use it dunno :lol: :lol:
And I think this may give you a clue as to the type of school I went to
ladies only ever cross there legs a the ankle, you never kiss on a first date, and a proper lady never ever!!!! lets a boy touch her under her skirt :shock: :shock: (social studies year 4)
I was totally useless at anything to do with Maths at school. Just scraped an O level pass.
However, when I demonstrated to some teenagers a couple of years back how to do long division the way I'd been taught, they were totally flummoxed and got their calculators out to check I was right (I was).
Made me feel like the Brain of Britain. :shock: :shock: :shock:
All of which just goes to show that the older you get the wiser you appear! :bounce: :bounce:
Logarithms
never used em since :shock:
Unfortunately double Maths was on a Friday afternoon which co-incided with happy hour at the local boozer...............needles to say, mine was a miss-spent youth redface
Never did get a Maths O-Level............but by goodness did I learn a few things from the local girls on a Friday cool
Hm. I had to prove some calculations using quadratics last week.
They are used, I assure you, although I haven't ever dissected a bull's eye.
Only thing I learnt at school which has proved useful is Never be a teacher lol
Quote by Tanis105
But can anyone (not in teaching) say they have used them since?

Yes! lol :lol:
Purely by chance there was a machine at my last job that needed fixing - it needed re-programming and I needed to work out the equation of a graph to give it the correct settings.
It is about the only time since leaving school I have made use of them but if I'd never learnt them the machine would not have been working.
Roger the Dragon cool (A mine of useless information. wink )
algebra
pythagerus
glaciation
how volcanoes work
the rules of rudby union
french in general (other than french oral ;) )
also..... i should have paid more attention in biology to the detailed diagram of womens sexual parts.
I think you'll find a lot of school's have recognised this and are changing their thinking. My eldest daughter's school now do a subject called "Design for Life" it basically teaches children all about real life as an adult in today's society.
Quote by markz
I think you'll find a lot of school's have recognised this and are changing their thinking. My eldest daughter's school now do a subject called "Design for Life" it basically teaches children all about real life as an adult in today's society.

My 15 yr old god daughter doesn't seem to be benefiting from this new kind of education. She’s currently taken to walking round in sack cloth and ashes, pronouncing that were all doomed.
Quote by Tanis105
How many things did we HAVE to learn at school that in real life we never use?

I did sex ed. That was a waste of time. rolleyes
Whilst you may not have used quadratic equations directly it should have helped you develop powers of logical thought which you will have used everyday
Not all education is imediately evident
Quote by markz
I think you'll find a lot of school's have recognised this and are changing their thinking. My eldest daughter's school now do a subject called "Design for Life" it basically teaches children all about real life as an adult in today's society.

I find that rather sad. They're gonna find out soon enough about the adult world when they become adults. It just seems to me to be like stealing their childhood away from them but then I don't know how old they are so perhaps my comment doesn't really apply, if for example, they're on the threshold of "adult" life. dunno
i learnt how to cut up a frog with a scalpel .. however i have never been attacked by a frog and i dont tend to carry scalpels to defend myself
Quote by fastr6uk
i learnt how to cut up a frog with a scalpel .. however i have never been attacked by a frog and i dont tend to carry scalpels to defend myself

Now thats the kind of thing i was thinking about.
Quote by EagerSlut
I think you'll find a lot of school's have recognised this and are changing their thinking. My eldest daughter's school now do a subject called "Design for Life" it basically teaches children all about real life as an adult in today's society.

I find that rather sad. They're gonna find out soon enough about the adult world when they become adults. It just seems to me to be like stealing their childhood away from them but then I don't know how old they are so perhaps my comment doesn't really apply, if for example, they're on the threshold of "adult" life. dunno
No I think you're right in general ES. Sadly todays kids grow up a hell of a lot quicker than we did. But if they are not exposed to some of todays "kids" (and I use the term VERY loosely) Television or magazines, they are exposed to Fashions and peer pressure..........
The only real way is to try and have enough of a relationship with your young uns' that they feel they can come to their parents for the REAL answers to their questions.
Heaven help those parents bringing up kids on the threshhold of Teenage let alone Adult life...
Fuck that'll be me then!!!!!!
Maths was done no justice whatsoever at school - it seemed so abstract that i couldnt see th e point. Only now have I realised that there is a mathematical underpinning to almost anything, and have had to go back and re learn a load of it!
I've not really had much use for Latin, apart from getting a slightly bigger laugh out of the "Romanes Aeunt Domus? What's that supposed to mean?" bit of Monty Python's Life of Brian that I might have otherwise.
Religious Studies was a complete wash-out too.
Quote by EagerSlut
I think you'll find a lot of school's have recognised this and are changing their thinking. My eldest daughter's school now do a subject called "Design for Life" it basically teaches children all about real life as an adult in today's society.

I find that rather sad. They're gonna find out soon enough about the adult world when they become adults. It just seems to me to be like stealing their childhood away from them but then I don't know how old they are so perhaps my comment doesn't really apply, if for example, they're on the threshold of "adult" life. dunno
they start at 14 and get taught things like, marriage, divorce, religion, sexual diseases,effect of crime on the community blah blah I was against it at first but was ok when I found out it was replacing religious education.
Quote by Tanis105
Ok so I'm not a pensioner yet, but since leaving school I have never in my working life had to use quadratic equations.

Eh ?
Is it something to do with squares :confused: dunno
This is my what i havent used.....
College
Maths ---- diffrentiaion and intergration...and working out the co-effeicant of friction of a train
Physics --- nothing bloody useless subject....
computing --- all of it --- as studied at university.
Uni
Computing - nothing as i am working in finance industry smile
MikeC
Quadratics, sometimes (when I have to & even then, not often).
French / German / Greek and Latin - wish I'd given more attention to the first two; certainly be useful to me now! Latin's helped understand a smattering of several languages and made me appear rather smarter than I am over luch on a few occasions!
Topic I think they should cover: There's too many; a little geography would have helped one sales guy I had... phoned up from the car in a Bristol sidestreet & asked for the name of his contact but was shoked to find that Birmingham is rather more north! He left the company and for all I know he's still trying to find his home! ;-)
While we're on the subject: Do they still teach English in British schools? After reading some CV's applying for a position recently, I wonder...
Quote by markz
I think you'll find a lot of school's have recognised this and are changing their thinking. My eldest daughter's school now do a subject called "Design for Life" it basically teaches children all about real life as an adult in today's society.

I find that rather sad. They're gonna find out soon enough about the adult world when they become adults. It just seems to me to be like stealing their childhood away from them but then I don't know how old they are so perhaps my comment doesn't really apply, if for example, they're on the threshold of "adult" life. dunno
they start at 14 and get taught things like, marriage, divorce, religion, sexual diseases, effect of crime on the community blah blah I was against it at first but was ok when I found out it was replacing religious education.
Don't knock R.E. I did it at O-level. Can't remember now if I passed it or not. The only reason the kids all did it was because our R.E. teacher was a buff on injustices done by tin pot dictators, and every lesson showed us some video of people being tortured. They were better than horror films, and were really quite informative. Can't remember ever picking a bible up though in the 2 years we did it, which probably means I failed the O-level biggrin
Regarding life classes, the only thing we ever did that came close was to have the local bank manager visit us with a load of phoney cheques and teach us how to write a cheque properly, even though we were at least 2 years from having a bloody current account with cheque book..
Quote by In_awe_of_U
While we're on the subject: Do they still teach English in British schools? After reading some CV's applying for a position recently, I wonder...

and no offence, but sometimes the posts here could do with a spell checking before clicking the submit button.
Quote by treasurechest
Not all education is immediately evident

I think treasurechest's reply hit the nail on the head for me. A lot of what we were learning in college seemed total bollox, but now I can see why they covered those topics.
Quote by MikeC
Physics --- nothing bloody useless subject....

You use physics just by being on Earth. Gravity and all that. Everyone uses physics.
physics is handy when you have to explain exactly how rainbows work to kids.
Quote by fluffer
physics is handy when you have to explain exactly how rainbows work to kids.

does it also help with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow dunno
bring back alchemy lessons, thats what i say :thumbup: