IamNotCreepy wrote:Any math more advanced than that is only useful for specific careers, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they're scamming you.
A while back my dad and I were choosing a rotary washing line. We wanted the one with the longest single length of line, so we could fit sheets on it, and they didn't list that measurement (we were choosing between a four- and a three-sided one of different sizes). So we applied a little basic trigonometry and figured out the answer. That was useful. Those contrived-sounding problems you get in exams really do crop up sometimes.
And you won't believe how many arguments I can win with even a basic knowledge of relativity. I call that useful, besides that relativity is just fascinating. Now you're going to say that that's physics, but theoretical physics and applied maths are largely the same.
But in fact that's all somewhat beside the point. I think a few people are losing track of the context of the question. I think Tess was asking more whether there's anything good for its own sake to be gotten out of learning maths beyond compulsory education, than whether the stuff you learn in school maths lessons has a practical application.
And there is. Of course not everyone enjoys the same things. For everyone who finds it endlessly amusing to pretend to be unable to distinguish between their coffee cup, their ring doughnut, and theirself, there's someone who enjoys watching association football. For everyone who appreciates the beauty of the speed of light being unity, there's someone who can't get enough of the screeching vocals of death metal. For everyone who takes immense satisfaction in a proof that's unexpectedly simple and elegant, there's someone who feels a tremendous sense of achievement at getting the perspective and shading exactly right on a sketch of a human face.
Actually, that last one I would feel a tremendous sense of achievement at, but I don't because I can't do it. And that brings me onto the fact that maths teaching in schools is an awful, terrible thing. Surprisingly, on a look back through this thread, no-one seems to have linked
Lockhart's Lament yet. It's a little long but it is very good. Tess actually said in her original post that in school she struggled to understand the point of maths and no-one would really explain it to her. That's a perfectly valid complaint, but it doesn't mean maths is terrible. We teach kids arithmetic in school and we don't teach them what maths is really all about - and many, many people never find out.
I loved maths in school, mostly. We didn't do a lot of it, and it was spread out between reams and reams of repetitive arithmetic, but I was lucky enough to recognise the real stuff in there and appreciate it. When I got to studying A-level Further Maths (which is the furthest you can usually take maths at high school in Britain) and told teachers I wanted to study maths at university, I said I particularly liked Pure Maths, and they told me that most of what I'd studied as 'pure' was actually applied, but nobody actually offered an explanation of what pure maths was. As it turned out, my impression of it was correct - I hadn't meant simply that I'd enjoyed the pure maths course we'd done, and I had grasped what pure maths was about and I did love it. But they came damned close to teaching me that I didn't.
Finally, as has been pointed out already - both Max and I have linked Mandelbrot animations - there's plenty of more conventional beauty that can be achieved through maths. I do encourage anyone who doesn't see any reason for a fine artist to consider maths to take a look at fractals.