"When are we ever gonna use this?" The battle cry of math students everywhere! Students often feel that if they're not learning something they will use every day, then they're wasting their time. Not so! Think about all the things you learn in history, science, language, music, & sports that most adults don't use every day -- it doesn't mean you shouldn't learn them! Do you really want to limit yourself to just the knowledge that everyone knows? No way! You would miss so much!
It's certainly true that many happy & productive adults don't simplify radicals or solve quadratic equations on a daily basis. But there are many good reasons YOU should learn them when you have the chance.
Here are seven good reasons for learning something you think you'll never use again:
1. It's part of the course. You're enrolled in a particular math course, so there is a certain amount of knowledge to which you are entitled. If you look at learning as something you GET to do, instead of something you HAVE to do, you'll understand better what I mean. In a sense, you're buying a product and you're paying for it with your work. You want to have something worthwhile when you finish. If you're in Math II, you deserve to know Math II at the end of the course. (It's my job to make sure you get the chance!)
2. Learning a new process gives you another way to think about things. Sometimes the best thing you can take away from a particular section in a math course is a new way of thinking through a problem. For example, you may not sit down to a sheet full of matrix exercises in real life, but you will deal with complicated calculations that could be represented with systems of equations. And even though you may not use the formal methods you learned in school, you may be better able to solve your real-life problems because of the thinking skills you developed in school.
3. It might help you with something later in the course. As a student, you might be surprised to look at the big picture and realize that a large portion of what you learn is framework for something else in the course. Your teacher sees it, but as a student, you have no way of knowing -- you'll just have to trust for now.
4. It might help you on a college entrance exam. You can't know in advance exactly what you might run into on the ACT or SAT. Answering a couple more questions correctly might make the difference in whether you get admitted, whether you have to take remedial math, or whether you get a scholarship.
5. It might help you with a later course or with a college course. You might not need to simplify radicals in order to pay your bills or balance your checkbook, but it sure will come in handy in physics, calculus, and trig.
6. It might open a new career possibility for you. In high school, you still have so many choices before you. How can you know what might be interesting to you later? You need to be exposed to lots of things so you can decide with confidence. It's like eating your vegetables -- you might not like them all, but you should at least have a taste before you decide!
7. Smart people just know stuff! One thing that makes smart people seem smart is that they know lots of facts and methods, and they can make connections and analogies with them. Did you ever meet a smart adult who didn't know anything? It's been said that a successful person knows something about everything and everything about something. You deserve to be successful -- you deserve to know something about math!
Think of your education as a jigsaw puzzle with 1000 pieces -- a single topic in a single course would be like one piece of your 1000 piece puzzle. You deserve to get a box that has all 1000 pieces in it. After the puzzle is put together, if you decide you don't need a piece, that's fine, but don't make that decision yet. Life may -- no, life will -- take you places you don't expect. Careers and opportunities change. You have no way of knowing what doors you are opening or closing for yourself by your academic choices this school year. Try to keep all the doors open -- learn everything you can, even if you don't see how useful it is right now.
Taken from http://tentoni.weebly.com/why-learn-algebra.html