'I assure you that in real life there is no such thing as algebra.'
The quote is attributed to American humourist Fran Lebowitz, part of an address to a graduating class in her former school. It draws an uncomfortable laugh because we realise it is true. If there ever was a need for the average citizen to be familiar with algebra in order to be a productive member of society, that need has been well and truly superseded by advances in modern technology.
I spent a working life teaching mathematics and I love the subject, its logical neatness, its way of reducing nature to equations, of predicting what will happen not because God or Newton or Einstein said so, but because the algebra says so.
The highlight of my tertiary career was the day a lecturer derived Maxwell's equations for our small class. The highlights of my teaching career were the occasions when I helped my senior students derive Euler's equation:
I explained to them that what Mozart and Michelangelo and Shakespeare did to show the meaning of the word sublime, Euler did with that simple equation. I think they connected with my enthusiasm.
I do not make those points to big-note myself, though I claim that they give me membership of an elite group. I wonder how many productive, law-abiding adults — politicians, say, or judges — have ever heard of either Maxwell or Euler. Let us put 10 per cent as a working hypothesis.
That might well be a suitable figure also for those who can still us solve a quadratic equation, but is surely an order of magnitude higher than those who have ever needed to do so.
Now visit any year 9 or year 10 mathematics class in any school in the country and even allowing for the absence of national curriculum, it is a safe bet that those children have struggled with quadratic equations at some time or are about to do so.
Let us not attempt to put a financial figure on this waste of effort, though surely it would frighten us. Instead, let us consider the poor kids who struggle with the work. Here is one way of solving quadratic equations: you 'plug in' appropriate values into the expression:
and the answer pops out. I guarantee you, dear reader, that the whole process means about as much to the average year 9 or 10 student