A couple of weeks ago
a colleague asked me if I was good in math and showed me his problem: he (basically) needed to know the length of a hypotenuse of a triangle (both sides are known) and he forgot how to do it. These kind of questions are the easiest ones, and I remember drumming up the solution, that is including the proof. After all, if I remember correctly, this was taught to us when we were age 12.
Scary. Why is that? After say 20plus years, the brain just rolled out the Pythagoras Theorem. It didn’t matter, if I was speaking in half Dutch, half English: the drawing plus the formula where right there. Instantly.
There is some magic in math and algebra. It doesn’t matter if you’ll ever use it. But if you use it, after so many years, even the simpliest question with the one solution makes me want to hug a math teacher. You kids better start paying attention.