Mar 1 2012: As a math tutor, I use math every day. My students often ask me if or how they'll use math later in life. While they may use a few of the concepts, most of the students will rarely directly apply the majority of the formulas they learn. So why should they learn math? A student should learn math for similar reasons an athlete lifts weights. While an athlete will never do a bench press in the middle of a game, the athlete trains with weights to get stronger. The atlete benefits indirectly from the weight training. Similarly, a student learning math is doing mental pushups. While the student may never directly use the exact formulas later in life, the student is learning how to make connections between concepts, find patterns, and develop the study skills necessary to understand more complex topics. The students is training for the moment when he or she encounters a subject that is actually interesting. I've found that this analogy helps a lot of my students understand why math (and other subjects too!) is important even though they may never directly use it later in life.
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