What level of mathmatics...

[Aremathiea]

...Should be known by someone who does not use math in daily life?

 

I am relearning everything I have forgotten since I graduated from high school. In college I have only taken 4 math classes and out of all the classes I have taken, that is only a very small percentage.

 

If anyone could give me a general ball park idea of where I should be, I would be very appreciative.

[JamesBrown]

I went through an Astronomy class this quarter and realized that after fifty year out of school my math skills had gone the way of the Lindy (a very old dance) and since I want to understand what I read - its back to school for me.

 

I decided to start near the bottom with on line math classes and simply go ahead with it as far and as fast as I can. Since the classes are on line with personal help if you need it you can bend your learning to your schedule.

 

School is vastly different than when I went through college. Now days kids will simply not put up with the boring teaching we were subjected to. I will never again sit through a class lecture that puts me to sleep.

 

Good luck...

[Graviphoton]

Some people can go through life, with very little knowledge of math... only the basic addition and subtraction, and maybe multiplication. I guess it depends on how much your life presses you to know, or have to know which maybe the case.

[John Cuthber]

There are some people who get through life without learning to read or write. On the other hand, I can't help thinking that the litterate ones have a better time.

I guess the same is true for numeracy and an understanding of maths.

OK you don't expect the man in the street to know a lot of calculus (insert "blonde joke" here) but if he knew a bit more about statistics he wouldn't waste his money on the lottery. He wouldn't get taken in by pyramid marketing scams if he knew about the arithmetic (and understood that the world runs out of people before you get rich from one of these schemes).

Most people don't really need to know any maths at all, but that's no reason not to learn it.

Congratulations for going back to learn. The question of what do you need to knoew is dependent on what do you want it for?

I was diligently taught how to invert 3 by 3 (and higher) matricies as part of my chemistry course; in the subnsequent 20 years as a professional chemist I have never had cause to use this arcane piece of information. I will probably live out my years without ever needing it. However, it is useful for some things- that's why I was taught it.

It's very difficult to say what is going to be "useful" in much the same way as it's generally hard to predict the future.

[PhDP]

Probability & statistics would be very useful (even if I dislike the latter).

 

Perhaps some basic algebra... sometime...

[Bignose]

To be able to function in everyday life? Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and maybe just a little basic probability. And of course all the things that go with it, fractions, decimals, percents, etc.

 

So... from that perspective, I guess there isn't much need to take math much past the 5th grade or so unless you are going to be one of the few people who really actually use higher level math in their work -- engineers, physicists, surveyor, basically any of the sciences.

 

Obviously that was a very rhetorical statement. Here's the real and true value of mathematics education: it is not very much the methods and techniques that are important to learn, as it is very important to learn how to logically approach problems and learn problem solving skills.

 

And mathematics is a perfect environment for practicing problem solving skills. The tools are well-defined: addition only adds two things together, nothing else. The problems (until you get to some very high level math) are usually well defined, and they have a definitively right or wrong answer: no wishy-washy "yes, but no" kind of answers.

 

Compare that to real life, where the tools are imperfect and the problems can either have several answers or no answer at all.

 

Learning how to solve math problems is a very test lab for teaching and learning problem solving skills. And if this aspect of math was emphasized rather than the "everyone's got to do it" or creating farcical situations trying to show how the students can apply trigonometry or calculus or geometry.

 

That's not to say that teaching examples is bad, but I think that more emphasis needs to be placed on the fact that the math class is there to teach problem solving skills, not necessarily trig.

[Riogho]

Number theory is very important. You also need to understand the distribution of primes. It is a good idea to have a strong grip on irrationals, particularly using Dedekind's cuts. Having a basic knowledge of trigonometric functions, infinite series, and possibly the ability to tie your shoelaces.

 

Nah, you don't need much math for 'everyday life'. Except on that rare occassion where I needed to know the angle of a corner of a triangle, in which I used the sine function, I've never used anything much higher than elementary algebra.

 

Though math itself is a very fun thing, and it seems you have a desire just to 'learn'. If you have that desire don't limit yourself on what you need for everyday life, just learn about it until you get sick of it, then find something else interesting.