>> Well, I suppose you could argue that, in the real world, if you want to 
>> do a nontrivial calculation and you actually need an exact answer, 
>> you'll use some sort of computation device.
> 
>   But that's not the point. "Just use a calculator" is not didactic, it
> doesn't teach anything, and will only make people lazy. This will bite
> back in the future, when people won't become programmers because they
> lack the proper education and way of thinking.

Which is why schools are supposed to teach people this stuff. Indeed, 
schools teach a whole bunch of stuff like woodwork, chemistry, and a 
bunch of other things that only a tiny handful of people will ever use.

I think you could successfully argue that even if nobody in the class 
ever needs to use algebra for anything, learning to do algebra teaches 
you logical thinking, which is probably quite relevant to daily life.

>> Out of curiosity... how the hell *do* you actually calculate the square 
>> root of something? I've always wondered.
> 
>   Your lack of google skills don't surprise me. Slightly more surprising is
> that someone of your age hasn't been taught that at school.

Remember that I went to a school for mentally retarded people. They 
didn't even teach us what a square root *is*, never mind how to compute 
one. (For that matter, they didn't teach us what a square is in the 
first place - other than that it's like a rectangle, but with equal 
sides.) The only "mathematics" we did was filling out page after page 
after page of long division problems. Because, after all, mathematics is 
all *about* long division, right?

>> Well, most people won't ever need to be computer programmers. It _is_ a 
>> minority occupation. Indeed, most professions don't really involve 
>> higher mathematics in any way.
> 
>   Then you wonder why some countries are more proficient than others.

Heh, point taken...

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